Find users in an area?

[Andrew Serff]

I can't find it in the API, so I thought I'd ask here if there is a
way to find all user within an area. It seems right now that the API
only supports locating users by their ID and not by just asking "are
any of my users in this area." Does anyone know if there is a way to
do this or if support for it is coming?

[Jesse Myers]

Andrew -

The platform does not currently support a "find all users in this
area" API; however, you can use the Polling API to ensure that your
application always has the most recent available location for your
users and you can then use this location information to determine
which users were last seen in a particular area:

http://developer.veriplace.com/devportal/developerguide/polling-api.html

We've actually built a few platform demos along these lines, so it can
definitely be done, although you'll find that there are a few
interesting decision to make:

- You'll have to decide what it means for a user to inside an area,
especially if the user location you have is not recent or was not high
accuracy.

- You'll also have to decide what process will drive new location
requests to the platform. The Polling API does not issue location
requests itself; it only ensures that your application has access to
the location of your users after it is requested. For some
smartphones, you can download our agent (thin client) software, which
will periodically push location data to the platform without the need
for a request, but for other devices, your application will have to
explicitly locate the user from time to time (using the Get Location
API).

Jesse

[Andrew Serff]

So with polling, assuming devices aren't pushing their location, you have to request their location at some interval.  This to me seems like it will be costly.  I don't know how much it really costs to locate a user each call (i just discovered the ULS and started looking at this, so no where near publishing an app), but it seems like this could add up real quick if you want any sort of timeliness to know if a user is in an area.  Am I understanding that correctly?  It's also not the cleanest solution.  Do you have any plans to add a feature for finding users or is that just too costly on the backend for you guys?  I assume you'd have to poll users on their networks to figure out where they are just like i'll be doing...

Andrew

[Jason F.]

Andrew,

To quote you, "Do you have any plans to add a feature for finding

users or is that just too costly on the backend for you guys?"

You nailed it. Today, the carriers charge us every time we
successfully locate a phone. We pass this per transaction cost onto
our developer partners. We know this model isn't ideal for some use
cases... and yes, to accomplish what you're after, polling would be
required... and would get expensive.

Note - this methodology is *very* valuable for some use cases. See
here:
http://location-labs.com/products.php#locationAPI-product

Hope that helps give some color.

Best,
Jason

On Sep 23, 12:24 pm, Andrew Serff <and...@serff.net> wrote:
> So with polling, assuming devices aren't pushing their location, you have to
> request their location at some interval.  This to me seems like it will be
> costly.  I don't know how much it really costs to locate a user each call (i
> just discovered the ULS and started looking at this, so no where near
> publishing an app), but it seems like this could add up real quick if you
> want any sort of timeliness to know if a user is in an area.  Am I
> understanding that correctly?  It's also not the cleanest solution.  Do you
> have any plans to add a feature for finding users or is that just too costly
> on the backend for you guys?  I assume you'd have to poll users on their
> networks to figure out where they are just like i'll be doing...
>
> Andrew
>