Jekyll Geocode

Making a interactive maps with adresses is impossible you need the coordinates.
Making a file writing by redactors with directly the coordinates of your data is impossible or too slow.

So you need a processus for generating coordinates form addresses by calling a service.

For speed reasons you‘d rather writing the coordinates in files during the build. You will probably generate a JSON file with coordinates in your HTML page displaying map.

I took the Nominatim open source service from Open Street Map for calling the data.

Example of YAML : _data/members.yml

- name: "Bertrand Keller"
  street: "place du vieux marché"
  postcode: "76000"
  city: "Rouen"
  region: "normandy"
  country: "france" 
- name: "John Doe"
  street: "rue Mendès France"
  postcode: "76190"
  city: "Yvetot" 
  region: "normandy"
  country: "france"  
- name: "Samuel Le Bihan"
  street: "Place Niemeyer" 
  city: "Le Havre"
  postcode: "76600"
  region: "normandy"
  country: "france"

For key matching, avoid accent in name or create a key in members.yml (ex: geoname) without space and accent.

Example of configuration _config.yml

jekyll_geocode:
  file-name: members.yml # Name of the YML store inside _data with a list of datas (required)
  file-path: _data # Path of the YML file, folder of your data (_data) by default (optional)
  name: name # Name of the field from the YML that will gave the name of the generated file (the name will be downcase and space replace by a dash) (required)
  address: address # Name of the address (street + city) or only street field (if city field exists) from the YML (required)
  postcode: postcode # Postcode from the YML (optional)
  city: city # Name of the town field from the YML, if you have a separated field address and city (optional)
  region: region # Name of the region, county or state or all in the same field from the YML (optional)
  country: country # Name of the country from the YML (optional)
  cache: true # Test if a file already exist
  outputfile: place.yml # Give the name of the file for an yml output (otherwise it will be JSON) <= usefull for jekyll-map

The service is very slow (when you have lot of entries) but you can generate files with the cache option. Be carefull, ignore this files in your git tracking files !

Example of loop with JSON : map.html with google map

{% for row in site.data.members | sort: 'name' %}
    {% assign geoname = row.name | replace: ' ', '-' | downcase %}
    var point = new google.maps.LatLng({% for coordinates in site.data.[geoname] %}{{ coordinates.lat }}, {{ coordinates.lon }}{% endfor %});
{% endfor %}

Example of loop with YAML : map.html with google map

{% for row in site.data.members | sort: 'name' %} 
    {% assign geoname = row.name | replace: ' ', '-' | downcase %}    
    {% assign places = site.data.place | where:"title", geoname %} 
    {% for coordinates in places %}
      var point = new google.maps.LatLng({{ coordinates.location.latitude }}, {{ coordinates.location.longitude }});
    {% endfor %}
{% endfor %}

This plugin is used in a production website and working well. You are invited for improvement proposals.