How to determine and watch location of the current user

It may be necessary for your application to determine the location of the current user – for example, if it needs to calculate users or places of interest closest to the current user.

The location of the current user can be determined by using the MOBILE GET LOCATION INTO action of the Rule Language. Before you can use this action, though, you need to add a special MGeoLocation object into your business space version. To do this right click on the Business Objects in the Configuration Elements Tree and select the Add GeoLocation object from the popup menu. Then you can use the MOBILE GET LOCATION INTO action that will write the current longitude and latitude (and some other values) of the current user into the attributes of the MGeoLocation object. For example:

CREATE MGeoLocation
MOBILE GET LOCATION INTO MGeoLocation
DISPLAY MESSAGE 'Longitude is ' + MobileGeoLocation.Longitude

You can use this instance of the MobileGeoLocation object to display the location on a GoogleMap, for example. Or you can provide rules that calculate the distance between geo locations using the DISTANCE function.

You can also record changes to the user location. This can be done by using the MOBILE START LOCATION WATCH INTO action. This action will automatically track changes to the user location and write them into the provided instance of the MobileGeoLocation object. For example:

MOBILE START LOCATION WATCH INTO MGeoLocation

Tracking changes can be stopped using the MOBILE STOP LOCATION WATCH FROM action. For example:

MOBILE STOP LOCATION WATCH FROM MGeoLocation

Note that all geo location actions can be used in both browser-based mobile and non-mobile applications as well as in native mobile applications.