Android maps utils is an open-source library, which provides advanced features for our maps. We'll demonstrate the most important set of features on live examples, like heatmaps, marker clustering and spherical geometry algorithms.
3. Introduction
• open-source library which contains classes that are
useful for a wide range of applications using the
Google Maps Android API.
• developed by Google
• current version is 0.3 (still in heavy development)
7. • Implement ClusterItem to represent a marker on the
map
• Add a new ClusterManager to group the cluster
items (markers) based on zoom level.
• Set the map's OnCameraChangeListener() to the
ClusterManager
• Feed the markers into the ClusterManager
Marker clustering
8.
9.
10.
11. Bubble icons
• Use custom markers a bit like
info windows - in that way
markers contains more
information
16. Heatmaps
• Add one or more heatmaps
to a Google map in your
application. Heatmaps
make it easy for viewers to
understand the distribution
and relative intensity of
data points on a map
17. Heatmaps
• Use HeatmapTileProvider.Builder(), passing it a
collection of LatLng objects, to add a new
HeatmapTileProvider.
• Create a new TileOverlayOptions object with the
relevant options, including the
HeatmapTileProvider.
• Call GoogleMap.addTileOverlay() to add the
overlay to the map.
18. Spherical geometry
• computeDistanceBetween() – Returns the distance, in
meters, between two latitude/longitude coordinates.
• computeHeading() – Returns the bearing, in degrees,
between two latitude/longitude coordinates.
• computeArea() – Returns the area, in square meters, of a
closed path on the Earth.
• interpolate() – Returns the latitude/longitude coordinates of
a point that lies a given fraction of the distance between
two given points. You can use this to animate a marker
between two points, for example.
19. Algorithms
• encode & decode polylines (i.e. obtained using
Google Directions API) with PolyUtil
20. Conclusion
• Android Maps Utils is a great lightweight library to
add that “extra” touch to Google maps interaction
• still in heavy development (missing few basic
functionalities)
• new utilities are already promised (new algorithms)