Android MapView Balloons

DEPRECATED

Please use Google Maps Android API v2: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/android/

This project provides an easy way to annotate map overlay items with a simple information balloon when using the Android Maps external library (com.google.android.maps). It consists of BalloonOverlayView, a view representing the balloon that is displayed over your MapView and BalloonItemizedOverlay, an abstract extension of ItemizedOverlay.

Basic Usage

Create a subclass of BalloonItemizedOverlay in the same way you would do for the base ItemizedOverlay class. Rather than overriding onTap() (which is already implemented and final in the subclass to invoke the balloon view display for each item tap), you override onBalloonTap() to handle a screen tap event on the balloon itself.

The data displayed in each balloon is mapped to the title and snippet arguments you provide to the constructor of each OverlayItem.

The repository contains a working sample application project which fully demonstrates its usage.

Custom Layouts

You can create your own balloon look & feel and custom data mapping by creating a subclass of BalloonOverlayView with a generic type that extends OverlayItem. Override the setupView(Context context, final ViewGroup parent) method and inflate your own XML layout using parent as the root of its view hierarchy.

One caveat with custom layouts is that you MUST include a layout container that represents the clickable action area of your balloon whose id property is android:id="@id/balloon_inner_layout".

An example custom layout and data mapping which downloads an image from the internet and displays it in an ImageView is included in the sample application project.

TapControlledMapView

This library also includes TapControlledMapView - an optional custom MapView implementation which can be used to more closely mimic behaviour of Google Maps for Android and the iOS MapKit component, such as double-tap to zoom and single-tap to dismiss a balloon.

Refer to the example Activity included in the sample application project.

Amazon Maps API & Kindle Fire

This library supports the alternative Amazon Maps API found on devices such as the 2nd generation Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD.

To enable Amazon Maps API support you should follow the Google Maps API migration instructions found at developer.amazon.com. Switch to the amazon-maps-api-support branch in this repository for an example. The library must be modified to use the com.amazon.geo.maps imports. You can use the mapimports.sh script to toggle between Google and Amazon APIs. This project does not currently provide a way to support both APIs in a single build.

Implementation

This project is implemented as an Android Library project. Refer to Referencing a library project in this document for instructions on how to include it in your own Android project. Ensure you have the latest Android SDK, tools and Eclipse plugin installed.

To install the library and sample project in Eclipse:

Select File, Import, Existing projects into workspace...
Select the root folder where you cloned/downloaded the repository to import both projects.
Use Project - Clean if there are any errors.

Credits

Author: Jeff Gilfelt