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Map boundary and batch plotting script

Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2008 11:08 am
by farwestvillager
Here's what I would like to do (I am wondering how complicated it is--I am a PHP novice):

I have thousands of addresses that I am going to through as part of a political campaign. What I am doing with all these addresses, which are in an Excel file, is trying to separate them into voting precincts. The only way I know where the boundaries of the precincts lie is by looking at hard to read maps on a website.

I have been using a website I found (http://www.batchgeocode.com/) to plot a bunch of addresses at once, then I manually click on each point on the map and see whether it is within the boundaries, and if it is, I copy the row from Excel that contains the address, and paste it into a new file that I have for each precinct.

So, there must be some way to define boundaries on a web-based map, then plot the addresses on that map and have the program select the points that lie within the boundaries and place them in an Excel worksheet or some other document.

Basically, it's a complete automation of the process I am trying to do. This may be a very complicated thing to script, and PHP may not be the best way to do it. But, I have spent a little time attempting to learn PHP and I thought this would be a practical application.