Toondoo lets you create comic strips and cartoons easily with just a few clicks, drags and drops. Dexter Morgan Facebook. Scribble maps have become part of that plan in the form of visual data, priceless! It helped us to find the our lost dog. Learn how to use the Google Maps API to add maps to your Android app, and how to request access to the user's location, using the new 6.0 permissions model. ![]() Create Location- Aware Android Apps with Google Maps. Not too long ago, if you were traveling to a new or unfamiliar place then you had to bring a physical map along with you, or at the very least do some research beforehand and be prepared to ask for directions if you ended up getting lost. Maps on mobile devices mean that getting lost is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, as not only does your typical smartphone put a map of the entire world at your fingertips, but it can also track and display your current location, so you can always see exactly where you are on that map. Adding a map to your latest Android app project has the potential to greatly improve the user experience – whether you’re creating a Gallery app that lets the user see exactly where each photo was taken; an exercise app that displays the route you took on your morning run, or a memo app that lets users write themselves reminders that pop up automatically as soon as they reach a specific location. In this article, I’ll show you how to use the Google Maps API to add maps to your Android applications. These maps are based on Google Maps data, and will have the same appearance and much of the same functionality as the maps you encounter in the official Google Maps for Mobile app. We’ll start by using Android Studio’s built- in Google Maps template to quickly generate an application that displays a map, before adding localisation awareness so this app is able to track and display the user’s current location. Create your project. The Google Maps Android API is distributed as part of the Google Play Services SDK, so the first thing you should do is launch your SDK Manager and make sure you have the latest version of Google Play Services installed – if an update is available, then now’s the time to install it. Next, create an Android Studio project with the settings of your choice, but when you reach the . Open this file and you’ll see that the map element is inserted into your layout via a Map. Fragment. Map. Fragment functions much like your typical fragment – it represents a portion of your user interface, and you can combine it with other layouts to create a multi- pane layout. However, in addition to acting as a container for your map, Map. Fragment automatically handles all of your map’s lifecycle needs, making it one of the easiest ways of inserting a map into your application. Your automatically- generated activity. If the user doesn’t have. Google Play Services installed,then at this point they’ll be prompted to install it. Map. Ready(Google. Map google. Map) . Here, we’re defining the latitude and longitude coordinates this marker will. Lat. Lng sydney = new Lat. Lng(- 3. 4, 1. 51). Add a marker to the map at the . Unless you specify otherwise. Android uses Google Maps’ standard marker icon, but you can customize this icon by. When you’re creating your own apps. To animate the camera, replace Google. Map. move. Camera. Google. Map. animate. Camera//. m. Map. Camera(Camera. Update. Factory. new. Lat. Lng(sydney)). . You still need to make a few tweaks to your code and acquire a Google Maps API key – which we’re going to cover in the next few sections. Updating Project Dependencies. The first change you need to make, is declaring Google Maps and Google Location APIs as project dependencies. Open your project’s module- level build. Android Studio has already added the Google Play Services SDK to the dependencies section: apply plugin: 'com. Unless you plan on using a long list of features from this package, then it makes more sense to compile the specific parts of the Google Play Services API that you’re actually going to use. For the sake of a more streamlined project, I’m going to remove this general Google Play Services dependency, and specify that my project uses the Google Maps and Location APIs only: dependencies . This template includes a google. Although you can log into the Google API Console independently and generate API keys outside of this template, the benefit of using this URL is that most of the information about your project is already entered for you. ![]() ![]() About Google Maps Google Maps is currently the most popular, as well as the most effective mapping service available on the internet. In addition to providing a. Survey with style Use your own photo or logo, and Forms will pick just the right colors to complete your own unique form, or choose from a set. Draw a fixed circle in Google Earth or Google Maps. In the interests of saving time, this is the method I’m going to use to generate my API key: Open your project’s res/values/google. This will take you directly to the Google API Console. Make sure . Restricted APIs tend to be more secure, so unless you have a very good reason not to, you’ll typically want to generate a restricted API by clicking . Find the API key you just created, and copy it. Hop back to Android Studio and paste this key into your google. It’s a good idea to check that this has actually happened, so open your Manifest and make sure the following section is now displaying your unique API key: < meta- data. Firstly, you’ll need to specify the version of Google Play Services that you’re using, for example: < meta- data. Either attach a physical Android device to your development machine or launch a compatible AVD, then select . After a few moments the app should appear onscreen. While you can interact with this map by dragging onscreen and pinching to zoom in, in its current state this map doesn’t detect your location. Since a map that has no idea where you are in the world isn’t particularly helpful (especially when compared to other location- aware apps), let’s give this project the ability to detect the user’s current location. Accessing the user’s location. There’s several ways you can add location awareness to your app, but the easiest method is to use the Google Play Services Location API, which is distributed as part of the Google Play Services SDK. In the following code, I’m still using the same API key and layout resource file, but I’ve updated my project’s Maps. Activity. java file to determine the last known location of the user’s device, which most of the time will be roughly equviliant to the user’s current location: package com. Activity. Compat. Build. import android. Bundle. import com. Google. Api. Client. Context. Compat. import android. Fragment. Activity. Google. Map. import com. On. Map. Ready. Callback. Marker. import com. Support. Map. Fragment. Package. Manager. Location. import com. Location. Listener. Location. Request. Location. Services. Since it’s the easiest way of adding a map to your project, I’m going to stick with using. Map. Fragment//. public class Maps. Activity extends Fragment. Activity implements On. Map. Ready. Callback. Google. Api. Client. Connection. Callbacks, Location. Listener . Users can also revoke a previously- granted. ![]() Here, we’re using. Context. Compat. check. Self. Permission to check whether this app currently has the. ACCESS. In this example I’m sticking with the. Normal” map. m. Map. Map. Type(Google. Map. MAP. Here, we’re adding a. Launch your app, and it should request access to your device’s location. Grant this permission request and you should see the map – but this time it’ll be centered over your current location, complete with an accurate location marker. Other map types. In this example, we set the map type to “normal,” however if you don’t like the look of the map that appears on your Android device, then you can always change it to any of the other maps supported by the Google Maps API: MAP. A satellite map with a transparent layer displaying major roads and feature labels. MAP. A satellite map with roads, but no labels. MAP. A topographic map that includes contour lines, labels and perspective shading. Some roads and labels may also be visible. Summary. In this article, we looked at how to use the Google Maps API to add map content to your application, and how to display the user’s current location on this map, using the new permissions model introduced in Android 6. If you’d like to try this project for yourself, you’ll find the full code over at Git. Interactive Visited Countries Map. Wordle - Beautiful Word Clouds. Wordle is a toy for generating. The clouds. give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently. You can tweak your clouds with different. You can print them out, or save them.
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