I use Bubble Go and I am trying to create a service that will centralise information on shops and products of a given category.
I am starting with the shops.
The service will be community based for ratings and reviews.
In order to provide some information from the start I would like to use Google Places and Places Details APIs as a source of the basic informations + ratings/reviews. The idea is for these to be the base and to remain locally: meaning that it will not be an API call to Google every time a user checks a shop. Once collected we will build the ratings and reviews locally.
Is there a resource I could consult to set this up?
Google API documentation, and then search results on Google itself related to the use and restrictions.
One thing to note, is when using Google places API you only get up to 60 results per call, so you need to be creative in how you setup the search to ensure you get all results. What most people are doing (not in Bubble but traditional coding world, as it is not possible to do in Bubble without traditional code involved) is to run a javascript function to break the target area into smaller targets and search with small radius of about 2km to ensure you can get all place results of the type you are looking for.
Also, reviews from Google places only return the most recent 5 reviews. So if the place has 152 reviews, you can only get the most recent 5. There are other API providers that have already scrapped this data from Google that you could obtain all of the reviews, but not directly from Google.
Also, it is against Google Places policies to store the data locally, but of course people break rules.
Hello and thanks for taking the time to reply and the precisions. Indeed the 60 results per call cap can be a challenge… and javascript another challenge!
Could you please name API providers that could have already all the reviews scrapped?
I am also looking for resource to help me use the google places api on bubble for what I am trying to achieve, meaning how to set up Bubble/plugins to make it work… and as you can see at this point I have very little knowledge about all this.
The get places call will return the list of Places, with 20 per page, and 60 maximum (ie: up to 3 pages).
The details call will return all information, such as reviews etc.
There is more to this, such as the workflows to capture the information, as well as to paginate through the Places pages, and to search the target area.
If you are in need of assistance to get this feature up and running in your app, feel free to send a PM and we can discuss the details of your needs and the associated costs of development.
