Possible? Use Google Maps/GPS to tell how long someone has been in a location?

Question

I'm thinking about building an iphone app that would use the GPS feature to track where someone is and for how long. I realize I could probably get the current location from the iphone from a website but the only way I'm familiar with is using ajax calls, etc (Sorry if this is a rather newbie concept) but I fear that would bog down my servers with constant calls to track time. Is there a better way to do this? Any resources I could consult on this idea/concept? Is it even plausible at this point?

I'm more versed in php/mysql but trying to branch out on some new ideas I've had. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

You could keep a local datastore then only send updates to the server when the app detects that the user has moved. I'm pretty sure that would work and on the server side you just work out the last time a user checked in and then compare that against the current time to see how long they have been somewhere. The only technical issue I can see with this is that this requires the user to have the iphone on and the app open the ENTIRE time they are somewhere, which would mean the iphone is now just a rather expensive GPS tracker with a built in phone!

Answer 2

you could store user locations on a local list on the iphone and once an hour you send the list with location/timesptamp pairs to server.

As James Raybould says, you can compute on server how long a user stayed inside a range for a given position. And also by sending data once an hour... not each time the iphone detects that user moved, then you save your server for continuously pings.