Ever wanted to make your PHP do more than just serve web pages and pull dynamic content from your databases? Going on a trip and trying to think of a good way to map out the route so that loved ones (or anyone, for that matter) can follow your path and know where you're going to be? In the latest article from the O'Reilly Network, you just might find some help with that.

In a new article from the co-author of the PHP Cookbook, "Trip Mapping with PHP", they show you how to take a rather large text file (download link provided) that contains zip codes and various information about them, and parse it for information that you can use to make a map (map image provided as well) with GD and PHP to show a route map for where you are going. They even give you all the code to pull out the information, translate it into X and Y coordinates for the map, and the function to draw the lines for you on the map.

Now, since this is such a large scale thing, you can't really get very detailed with the lines, but at least it gives you an idea of how you can have something similar to MapQuest or those Yahoo maps I've heard so much about lately...