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I am looking for a way to store GPS tracks without having to export them to GPX. The GPS tracks will only be used within an iOS/Android app.

App: The app lets users record GPS tracks and sync these to a server. Users can add information and notes to each recorded track. Each GPS point also has a timestamp so the track can be "played" in real-time (hence using GPX). After a GPS track is synced, other user can browse uploaded tracks by querying a MongoDB track collection. When users view the details they see the Mongo document content and also a Google Map with the GPX track drawn out.

Current solution: My current solution is to export the recorded GPS track to a GPX file and store it on Amazon S3 using Cloudfront. A MongoDB document in the tracks collection contains user id, notes, date/time, comments, and links to the GPX track and a photo.

Is there a better way to store these GPS tracks rather than exporting/importing them to GPX? It's a cumbersome process and not necessary since users will never interact with the tracks outside the app. GPX files also take up a lot of space. However, I can't come up with a way to store the track data since the app is cross platform.

I use Amazon EC2 with php, Apache & MongoDB for back-end.

Vadim Kotov
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Karl
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1 Answers1

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PHP + SQL

In the app send a request to the server sending the data either via POST, GET, or by uploading a file. In the processing PHP script open a connection to an SQL Database, and store your information there.

Matt Clark
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  • Thanks for the answer Matt. Another thing to consider is of course cost, where storing files on S3 is much cheaper than on EC2. I have received another recommendation of using SQLite on device and CSV on S3 for compatibility. This might be cheaper than going the database route and using EBS. – Karl Nov 12 '12 at 08:51