Usually u have to set up a little script + htmlpage on your server to run google maps,
but i was wondering - is it possible to use google maps directly?
i mean by just calling an url with parameters (gpoint coordinates, zoomfactor ..) and it loads the map fullscreen without having to use my own server?
Sounds like you might be after the static maps api. You can build a URL specifying the properties of the map like:
zoom
position
markers (including custom markers)
image size
etc
and you will get back a rendered image of the map. Something like:
Obviously this just gives you a fixed image of the map you are after. If you need a dynamic Google map, then you will need to use the Google Maps Javascript API.
Not hosted by Google. You might find some other website that uses the API to do the same thing.
Google Maps API
Related
I'm making a website that has an embedded google map (iFrame) that has multiple place names on it that I set up in My Places. What I want is to be able to list the place names and addresses down the side of the map like it does in My Places.
Obviously I can just export the KML data of the map but I want the page to automatically update when a new place is added to the My Places map without having to export a new file.
If Google still supported RSS feeds I would probably use that, but the current API seems to need to rely on URL requests.
Any help or suggestions are appreciated!
I don't think you can do this with an embedded map. You can add a sidebar to a map from MyPlaces using the Google Maps API v3, a third party KML parser like geoxml3 and a proxy.
example
I'd like to be able to use the stamen maps watercolor layer in conjunction with the static maps api from Google.
I'm hoping this is simple but I'm not sure how to implement it...
A static maps URL looks something like this:
https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/staticmap?center=40.714728,-73.998672&zoom=12&size=400x400&sensor=false
And the Stamen maps information is here:
http://maps.stamen.com/#watercolor
Thanks a lot for your help!
If you go to this page you'll see that you can center on an area, select the map style and the image size, and then press the "MAKE" button. This will generate a static image which you can then reference.
Stamen doesn't offer a static maps URL you can use to generate maps from a lat/lng pair, like Google does. If this is for a one-off map, you'll be fine. Otherwise, it doesn't seem like you'd be able to easily (see below) dynamically generate static map images.
P.S. If you're really really interested, you could take a look at the page's JavaScript source and see that by calling generateExportURL(), you'd get the URL to start a server-side rendering of a static watercolor map. You'd then need to poll that same URL (using (for instance) a server-side proxy, as cross-domain restrictions won't allow you to poll this page from your JavaScript source) to check when the map's "status" changes from "not_started" to "finished"... :-)
I want to make Custom Map based on Google maps APIs I am using this code to get the Bitmap image
http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/staticmap?zoom=18&maptype=hybrid&size=560x480&markers=loc:26.177001,32.736675&sensor=false
Now I want to scroll the map, How can I do that. in other words I want algorithm to link between coordinates and gotten image size and map zoom
Thanks a lot
You are using Static google maps api. That's mean you will get just a print of the map as an image. This is really useful when you want to show just a place in the map without download the javascript lib.
If you want use the map zoom, scrool and other things you have to use the javascript google maps api
I know I can do it with the Google Maps API, but do you know if there is a way to change the marker in an embedded Google Map?
I want to replace the default "A" button for a "B" button or the marker with just a dot in the middle.
I haven't played around with embedding Google Maps before (I generally go straight to the API for stuff like this). I tried a couple of approaches:
I figured maybe the embed syntax would be the same as the static maps api. So I grabbed a static maps URL, copied the markers param from that and tried sticking it into the iFrame URL. This didn't work so much.
I created a Google MyPlaces and customized the marker to use the one your provided. This created a Test map which had the appropriate marker icon. I then grabbed the embed code and stuck it on a test page and voila!
Actually I had the same problem but didn't use any of the methods above and thought I share:
If you only want a marker as I did but don't want to use API then simply fool google into thinking you want a route planned using the GET tags "saddr" and "daddr"
"saddr" defines your start location (post code , street name+ number, whatever)
ONLY define saddr and leave out daddr and google maps will by default still show the marker for "A" (your start location) exactly where you want it , all in iframe without API.
Well i want to upgrade contact page with dynamic map showing location and give oportunity to calculate route for comapny headquatters. Id it necessery for such simple task use Google api? i mean here generating akey etc? Fo i have any other alternatives to google maps?
There's really no reason to mess with the API at all unless you need to customize the appearance or behavior of gmaps. Why not just use an iframe with a url of:
http://maps.google.com/?q=[you-url-encoded-address-here]
or better yet, set up a textbox and a 'get directions' button to redirect that frame to:
http://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=[their-address]&daddr=[your-address]
edit: this works well in modal dialog if you don't want the google logo sticking out like a sore thumb in your pageflow
You could probably embed directly with a specific URL that will configure it to have the destination you want.
By the way, well written answers are much more likely to receive useful responses here.
You could consider http://www.openlayers.org/ as an alternative to google maps.
In fact open layers can be used to add a Google map, or an OpenStreetMap map or a Bing map, etc.