Map Clustering Algorithm

Question

My current code is pretty quick, but I need to make it even faster so we can accommodate even more markers. Any suggestions?

Notes:

The code runs fastest when the SQL statement is ordered by marker name - which itself does a very partial job of clustering the markers (the names of markers in the same location are often, but not always similar).
I can't pre-cluster the markers, because they can be dynamically searched and filtered.
I've tried grid-based clustering - but the results often aren't very nice.
I know that the clusters are slightly skewed on a Mercator projection.
I'm not interested in a commercial clustering service.

The code:

$singleMarkers = array();
$clusterMarkers = array();

while (count($markers)) {
    $marker  = array_pop($markers);
    $cluster = array();

    // Compare marker against all remaining markers.
    foreach ($markers as $key => $compareMarker) {
        // This function returns the distance between two markers, at a defined zoom level.
        $pixels = pixelDistance($marker['lat'], $marker['lng'], $compareMarker['lat'], $compareMarker['lng'], $zoomLevel);
        // If two markers are closer than defined distance, remove compareMarker from array and add to cluster.
        if ($pixels < $distance) {
            unset($markers[$key]);
            $cluster[] = $compareMarker;
        }
    }

    // If a marker was added to cluster, also add the marker we were comparing to.
    if (count($cluster) > 0) {
        $cluster[] = $marker;
        $clusterMarkers[] = $cluster;
    } else {
        $singleMarkers[] = $marker;
    }
}

function pixelDistance($lat1, $lon1, $lat2, $lon2, $zoom) {
    $x1 = $lon1*10000000; //This is what I did to compensate for using lat/lon values instead of pixels.
    $y1 = $lat1*10000000;
    $x2 = $lon2*10000000;
    $y2 = $lat2*10000000;

    return sqrt(pow(($x1-$x2),2) + pow(($y1-$y2),2)) >> (21 - $zoom); //21 is the max zoom level
}

UPDATE

Here's the current code:

$singleMarkers = array();
$clusterMarkers = array();

// Minimum distance between markers to be included in a cluster, at diff. zoom levels
$DISTANCE = (10000000 >> $ZOOM) / 100000;

// Loop until all markers have been compared.
while (count($markers)) {
    $marker  = array_pop($markers);
    $cluster = array();

    // Compare against all markers which are left.
    foreach ($markers as $key => $target) {
        $pixels = abs($marker['lat']-$target['lat']) + abs($marker['lng']-$target['lng']);

        // If the two markers are closer than given distance remove target marker from array and add it to cluster.
        if ($pixels < $DISTANCE) {
            unset($markers[$key]);
            $cluster[] = $target;
        }
    }

    // If a marker has been added to cluster, add also the one we were comparing to.
    if (count($cluster) > 0) {
        $cluster[] = $marker;
        $clusterMarkers[] = $cluster;
    } else {
        $singleMarkers[] = $marker;
    }
}

user_187402 · Answer

So here's what I did - I added two extra columns to the markers(point) table with the mercator converted values for the latitude and longitude using the following functions:

public static $offset = 268435456;
public static $radius = 85445659.44705395; /* $offset / pi(); */

function LonToX($lon)
{
    return round(self::$offset + self::$radius * $lon * pi() / 180);        
}

function LatToY($lat)
{
    return round(self::$offset - self::$radius * log((1 + sin($lat * pi() / 180)) / (1 - sin($lat * pi() / 180))) / 2);
}

This way I could get accurately placed clusters. I'm still trying to work out how to avoid using array_pop and cycling through every time. So far its pretty efficient with sub-1000 markers. I'll be posting results for +5K and +10K markers later.

Avoiding the pixelDistance function and having it inline increases performance by almost half!

Map Clustering Algorithm

8 Answers