Failte Maps

About Failte Maps

This app makes use of data that has been made available by Failte Ireland on data.gov.ie under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.

It allows the user to view thousands of attractions, activities, and accommodation available in Ireland. Visible on a clear and easy to use map. The user can share an attraction to a friend, as well as view the contact details for said attraction. There are also some promoted attractions available on the sidebar in desktop and the bottom panel in mobile.

Background

I was made aware of data.gov.ie over a year ago. Since then I have been visiting the site on and off, hoping to find an interesting dataset. The site hosts all sorts of data in various formats. This data includes Irish car sales, domestic information, tourist attractions, and much more. I commend all involved for making this data public.

For me, it was Failte Ireland's data that stood out. I instantly had the idea to take the geo-location information provided and render it on a map of Ireland for all to see. This resulted in the creation of Failte Maps.

Tech Stack

Failte Maps is an Angular 9 application. It is hosted on Firebase. The integration between Angular and Firebase is also flawless and easy to use, Google has done an excellent job here.

I found Angular 9 to be a very rewarding framework. There were many tools and plugins available to handle the more mundane development tasks. This meant that I could focus on the functionality of the application.

Open Street Maps is used along with the awesome OpenLayers npm package to render the map of Ireland. Open Street Maps is an open source alternative to Google Maps. Although there was a steep learning curve, the OpenLayers package meant that I could easily integrate the map to the application as well as add functionality such as icons and popups.

The Author

Failte Maps was developed by Donegal Software Engineer Brian Douglas. You can see more of his work at the following url https://briandgls.github.io/.