The document describes an open-source utility library for the Google Maps Android API, developed by Google, aimed at enhancing various mapping applications. Key features include marker clustering, bubble icons, heatmaps, and spherical geometry calculations. The library is in active development, with future updates expected to introduce additional functionalities.

1. Google Maps Android API utility library
Željko Plesac

2. Content
• Introduction
• Setup
• Usage
• Conclusion

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)

4. Setup
• Maven
• Gradle
• Eclipse
• clone repo from GitHub and add as library project

5. Usage
• Marker clustering
• Bubble icons
• Heatmaps
• Spherical geometry and algorithms

6. Marker clustering
The marker clustering
utility helps you
manage multiple
markers at different
zoom levels

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

11. Bubble icons
• Use custom markers a bit like
info windows - in that way
markers contains more
information

12. Bubble icons

13. Bubble icons - options
1. Default option

14. Bubble icons - options
2. Rotate icon

15. Bubble icons - options
3. Rotate icon and content

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)