Vulcan Places

Install

meteor add vulcan:places

Usage

This package enables two distinct features, which can be used separately or together:

1. A PlaceControl autocomplete form component that lets users fill in a place via the Google Maps Places API.
2. A Places collection that can optionally be used to store places as individual documents.

Both require setting your Google Maps API key in your settings.json file's public section:

"googlemaps": {
  "apiKey": "123foo"
}

And install npm packages :

npm install --save @google/maps react-places-autocomplete

Place Form Control

Uses https://github.com/kenny-hibino/react-places-autocomplete.

To use:

1. Import PlaceControl from 'meteor/vulcan:places'
2. Create a placeName custom field on one of your collections
3. Set this field's control property to PlaceControl.
4. Also create a placeId field on the same collection.
5. Add placeName and placeId to the appropriate fragments.

Places Collection

Uses https://github.com/googlemaps/google-maps-services-js.

The Places collection makes it easy to check for a placeId field on a newly inserted or edited document, and if present insert a new place document.

There are two distinct ways to use this collection:

1. Associate a place with one or more documents from another collection, such as adding a location to individual photos.
2. Build a Yelp-like directory of places by using the Places collection as a base and adding your own custom fields to it.

checkAndAddPlace

The package exports a checkAndAddPlace function that takes a placeId, checks the Places collection for any existing document with that id, and if none is found queries the Google Places API for the place details before inserting it in the database:

import { addCallback } from 'meteor/vulcan:core';
import { checkAndAddPlace } from 'meteor/vulcan:places';

function postsNewCheckForNewPlace (document, user) {
  if (document.placeId) checkAndAddPlace(document.placeId);
}
addCallback('posts.new.async', postsNewCheckForNewPlace);

function postsEditCheckForNewPlace (document) {
  if (document.placeId) checkAndAddPlace(document.placeId);
}
addCallback('posts.edit.async', postsEditCheckForNewPlace);

Resolvers

The package also creates resolvers for the Places collection.