Was wondering how hard it was to make an app that basically did a search around your local area, similar to google. To find stores, restaurants, and gas stations, something similar to that?
And is there anyone who could direct me to what I need to start making an app such as this.

You mean Google maps?

If this is for Android I would start by looking at Java and the Android SDK.

This post was edited by AbDuCt on Mar 16 2016 11:41pm

I'm thinking more for an iphone. And I don't care if it uses google maps or not, just puts all the things on a search function in the app.

This post was edited by Soulismine on Mar 17 2016 12:27am

Learn swift then. Would be easier with a mac, but you can make do using third parties. If you start now, you might be done by the end of the year. If it's for personal use and you're not trying to put something in the app store, there are probably other apps that do what you want. As Mentioned, Google maps shows all that information and more. Or you can try yelp

Simple, just send http request to google api. returns json message.

https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/nearbysearch/json?location=-33.8670522,151.1957362&radius=500&type=restaurant&name=cruise&key=YOUR_API_KEY

Not sure if you need api key for local development. But you might be able to get a free one if you're not profiting from your app, otherwise it costs like $5000 a year.

If you are just going to use the Google API, you might as well just use Google maps, in my opinion.

And that's not to say create a new API, it's to say just use Google maps.

This post was edited by ROM on Mar 17 2016 08:07am

uhh very hard unless you use google maps API that has all that data..
are you going to create a geographical database with everything local to everywhere?

http://www.openstreetmap.org/ is another alternative.