Following on from getting to grips with MVC3 EF Code First I’m starting to extend my application further so I can start getting some functionality out of it.

I’ve decided to create a database of searchable items that will plot to locations. To do this I first need to get my application extended and split out on a permissions level. I don’t want my site visitors to be able to edit this searchable data so I need to suss out how MVC3 deals with this.

Once my site is viewable in the right way I want to get these items plotted and viewable on a Google Map implementation. This should be reasonably simple although as a newbie at MVC3 you never know!

With these plotted locations on the Google Map I want to use the mobile phone’s location to centre up the map bringing back the plotted items in the user’s area. I’ve done some research and it seems that I should be able to hook into the Mobile Web Browser’s location since this is also able to be set just using mobile data and is not reliant on the user having a GPS signal on their phone. I’ve also found that different browsers may integrate differently so I’m just going to focus on one for now and see what I can get working.

But this is a website in its own right too so what do I display to the user viewing the website from a computer? Well I guess I could provide a location selector or location search but I could look at obtaining the geo-location from the user’s IP address. It won’t be as accurate as the mobile phone or providing a manual search but could narrow the user by region if nothing else. Further investigation is required though before I decide on anything.

Watch this space …