Marker creation through backend database table/view?

The upcoming Pro version of this plugin will allow you to import and export markers from a CSV file. However, it’s not the same functionality you’re asking for with the database piece. I’m not aware of any plugin that does marker creation like this exactly. Thanks for your interest in our plugin! Please let me know if you have anymore questions.

The ability to import from CSV might be an option if we can set it up as follows:

– Query (View) in backend database scheduled to run on a nightly basis and output to CSV on server.
– Plugin can point to a location on the server for the CSV file and refresh the import on a regular basis.

Hi @mikegrattan

Actually, it sounds like there’s a different feature in our Maps Builder Pro (being released this week) that might do what you want. But, can you describe the exact use-case. Not the technical side, but what is it that you are generating regularly that you want shown on a Map? Are they new store locations, are they UPS dropoff points? Talk about the user experience and we’ll see what we’ve got up our sleeves.

The site is at https://pmppals.net and our existing map is on https://pmppals.net/listing-type/surgeon/. On this page, you can see a QuickView fly-out on the right side of the page and some filters on the bottom of the page. This plugin is actually built into the theme and is lacking some features. We also tried another plugin (WP Google Maps) which you can see on https://pmppals.net/find-a-surgeon/; this one is a little better because you can search the data stored in the plugin and sort on the column headers.

Our goal, however, is to be able to feed data to the map from our contacts database, which is vTiger self-hosted which we installed to our site via Softaculous. Since the vTiger contacts database can be queried I was hoping that we could tie our contacts database to a Google Maps plugin so our patients and caregivers have an always-up-to-date map of physicians. That way, we just have to maintain our physician data in one location, the vTiger contacts database.

I see now clearly. We have a few things that will interest you then.

1) Maps Builder Pro will have a “Mashup” feature. Which will work pretty much just like your current map. When you create a new post — let’s call it Contacts — that post has location information, and you map that information to an existing Map in Maps Builder. Now, everytime you create a new contact, or update a contact, your Map is automatically updated.

2) But your next big hurdle is that automatic syncing with a third party system. We don’t have that in development at the moment. But one feature of Maps Builder Pro will be the ability to have Addons and we are planning on a “Location Feeds” Addon which would allow markers to be generated automatically from a public feed, like and RSS Feed, or JSON Feed, or even a Social Media API. We’re really excited about this feature, but like I mentioned, first things first is to get Maps Builder Pro out the door (this week) then the Location Feeds Addon will come much later.

I think between those two things we’ll be able to get you 99% of the way there. The last leg will just be doing some Custom CSS to match what your theme is currently doing, but that’s pretty straight forward.

Thanks for your interest in Maps Builder!

Are you saying that RSS or JSON can be used to execute an SQL query? And that would feed the data from the backend tables to generate markers? If that’s not what you’re saying then I’m afraid I’m not understanding your point number 2 above. Although vTiger is a 3rd party application, the data are stored in tables that I can access via phpMyAdmin so I’m guessing that the technology should exist (php) that could be used to populate map markers via a query…unless I’m missing something?