geolocation

I recently had to add support for the MaxMind free GeoIP database to a PHP container build that was based on the official Docker PHP image on Docker Hub. Unfortunately, it seems nobody else who's added this support has documented it, so I figured I'd post this so that the next poor soul who needs to implement the functionality doesn't have to spend half a day doing it!

First, you need the PHP geoip extension, which is available via PECL (note: if you can make the PHP project itself use a composer library, there are a few better/more current geoip libraries available via Packagist!). Here's how to install it in one of the php 5.6 or 7.0-apache images (note that 7.1 uses Debian Stretch instead of Jessie... but the instructions should be the same there):

I recently received a question from a friend who's setting up a new site in Drupal 7, and is using the GMap Module, Location, and Views, to set up a map of upcoming events for his website.

My response (posted below) basically gives some pointers for what other people (often creating custom implementations of Google Maps on their sites) are doing to avoid the problem of 'decluttering' or 'declustering' multiple points at the same location (same coordinates). My question is: how do you handle declustering on your Drupal site? Are there any perferred techniques? Luckily for me, this is a problem I have yet to encounter, as I've only had to map locations of stores, parishes, etc., that are already spread out evenly over some area of a map :-)

My response to his question follows: