Strange Request HTML5 geolocation?

Mobile
1

hello
I’m a web designer and developer and just got a phone call from a guy that had a puzzling request.
He wanted to know if I could make a one page website basically a contact page with just maybe a name and a comment area
that a person could fill out from their mobile phone and would send the message plus their location or co-ordinance to his phone if they were within 10 miles or so of his location, a Google map type thing I think.

Does anybody have an idea how or if this could be done and the best way to do? maybe point me to a good tutorial or website?
could you do this with HTML 5 geolocation?
If so could you point me to a good tutorial or website?
I know some JavaScript and jQuery.

2

Possible yes. A pain in the @ss and probably not as simple as you or the client might think – yes. Remember though “HTML” geolocation targeting is not allowed unless the user accepts it.

3

yeah I didn’t think it would be simple, if it was simple I wouldn’t want to learn how to do it.

4

If the site owner is OK with the user being aware that their location is being asked it is very easy – just call the javascript geolocation API that is pretty ubiquitously supported in mobile browsers and call it a day.

If he is trying to be sly then it gets a bit trickier as they tend not to want to share location without user permission.

5

Please note that this app would not be accepted into the App Store on iTunes. You would need to make this as a web app if you want it on all devices.