Locations Search API

[TrinaKat]

Given location data from previous events (in our DB), replace the backend implementation for the search API to do smarter/fuzzier string matching. Current implementation does hacky DB search but is pretty limited, definitely better alternatives out there. Essentially given a location name string query, we want to get non-duplicate location data.

Some thoughts:

• Create some kind of mapping of UCLA buildings to location data and store as needed in DB
• Associate different spellings/names for buildings to a single location in the DB (deduplicate event data)
  • e.g. Boelter = BH, engr VI = Engineering 6, Humanities = Kaplan, etc.
• Figure out some smart/fuzzy search based on location string
• Use Google Maps API to handle apartment/non-UCLA locations (515 Kelton Ave => location data from Maps API rather than our UCLA Locations API?)