Now in order to get started before we can do any of this we have to figure out exactly what sort of URL structure we're going to use to get that data, the latitude and longitude information, showing up correctly in Google Maps. And there's actually a pretty uniform way to set up the URL, which is going to make this really easy.

To show you exactly what URL we're going to be using, let's go ahead and open up a new tab. The URL is going to go to https://www.google.com/maps. Now from here we are going to be providing a query parameter, and the query parameter will be specifying; it's called q:

And it is going to expect the latitude and longitude to be the value separated by a comma. Now we actually have that here in the localhost:3000 tab. Although there will be a little space between the comma, either way we can copy that value, head back over into the other tab, paste it in, and just remove the space.

With this in place we now have a URL that we can use inside our application. Now when I hit enter, we are going to view a map at the correct location, but you'll notice the URL changes. That's perfectly fine; as long as we send the user to this URL, it doesn't really matter what it ends up becoming. I'm going to hit enter; you can see right away we are getting a Google Map, and as the page loads the URL is indeed going to change.

Now we're looking at something completely different from what we typed in, but the actual pin, the red pin, it is correct within a couple of houses. Now with that knowledge we can generate a URL that follows that same format, spit that out inside the website, and we'll have that clickable link where someone can view the location of someone else.