Google Maps JavaScript API Cookbook Over 50 recipes to help you create web maps and GIS web applications using the Google Maps JavaScript API Alper Dincer Balkan Uraz BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI Google Maps JavaScript API Cookbook Copyright © 2013 Packt Publishing All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews. Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the authors, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book. Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information. First published: December 2013 Production Reference: 1191213 Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. Livery Place 35 Livery Street Birmingham B3 2PB, UK. ISBN 978-1-84969-882-5 www.packtpub.com Cover Image by Aniket Sawant ([email protected]) Credits Authors Copy Editors Alper Dincer Sarang Chari Balkan Uraz Mradula Hegde Gladson Monteiro Reviewers Karuna Narayanan Bramus Van Damme Kirti Pai Shreerang Patwardhan Shambhavi Pai Rodolfo Pereira Laxmi Subramanian Rick Viscomi Project Coordinator Acquisition Editors Leena Purkait Edward Gordon Ashwin Nair Proofreader Sam Wood Paul Hindle Lead Technical Editor Indexer Balaji Naidu Tejal Soni Technical Editors Production Coordinator Tanvi Bhatt Conidon Miranda Akashdeep Kundu Cover Work Edwin Moses Conidon Miranda Siddhi Rane About the Authors Alper Dincer is a civil engineer with an MS degree in Geographical Sciences. He has more than 10 years of experience in developing web and mobile GIS/LBS projects. Since the beginning of his career, he was always passionate about maps and geo stuff. He started working as a research assistant at a university and then moved to a governmental agency to work with maps. He is also the co-founder of a tech company named Mekansal. He also has some achievements relating to geo web projects. In 2009, he got the first place in the ESRI Developer Summit Mashup Challenge with his open source project ExtMap. ExtMap was based on the Google Maps JavaScript API v2. He is one of the Google Qualified Developers of the Google Maps JavaScript API program. In 2010, he also worked as a proctor in the same program as a volunteer. As a developer and entrepreneur, he still likes coding with JavaScript, PHP, and Objective-C on different web and mobile projects. He completely agrees with Steve Jobs' quotes "Love what you do" and "Stay hungry, stay foolish". First, I would like to dedicate this book to my wife, Begum—the light of my life—for understanding my passion for coding and the digital world. I would like to thank God for having her in my life. Words cannot express my gratitude and love to her. Second, I wish to acknowledge my loving family, who are always there for me. Balkan Uraz is a city planner with an MS degree in Geographical Sciences. He has over 15 years of experience in the field of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Throughout his career, he has worked on several projects with one thing in common: GIS. In the early days of his career, he worked on projects involving municipal GIS and city information systems. He has also worked as a research assistant while he was conducting the tedious work on his thesis on routing systems. He has worked on major LBS projects for mobile operators in Turkey that involve both software development and building the data inventory. He co-founded a tech company that specialized in navigation data collection and navigation products. He has also been a GIS consultant for major companies operating in the areas of field tracking and real estate. In all his projects, he has worked around the same passion: building up the spatial infrastructure. I would like to thank Esra for her love, support, and encouragement while writing this book. I would also like to thank my fellow colleagues for their enthusiasm and encouragement that lead to writing this book. About the Reviewers Bramus Van Damme is a web enthusiast from Belgium interested in "all Web things" ever since he discovered the Internet back in 1997. Professionally, after having worked as a web developer for several years at several web agencies, he is now a lecturer of web technologies at a technical university. Next to teaching students basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, he also teaches them to write proper SQL statements. In his job, he's also responsible for authoring and maintaining the server-side web scripting (PHP) and web and mobile courses. In his spare time, he likes to goof around with web-related technologies and keep his blog bram.us up-to-date. He can be found attending and speaking at web meetups and conferences. Seeing a nice piece of optimized and secure code can put a smile on his face. He lives in Vinkt, Belgium, with his girlfriend Eveline, his son Finn, and his daughter Tila. He prefers cats over dogs. Shreerang Patwardhan completed his bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering and has since been working on various technologies for the last three years. He started off working for a small start-up in Pune, India, on an innovative solar-powered Linux-based hand- held device. He has also worked extensively on the Google Maps API v3 and worked in the GIS domain for more than a year. He is currently employed with an MNC in Pune, India, as a Sr. Web Developer and works on the frontend development of various web applications. When not working on a project, he blogs about either Google Maps API v3 or the jQuery Mobile framework on his blog "Spatial Unlimited". When not working or blogging, he loves spending time with his family and friends. If not on the Web, he can be found playing badminton on the weekends. He has been playing badminton for the last 20 years and also takes a keen interest in Ufology. You can reach him on his blog, LinkedIn, or follow him on Twitter (@shreerangp). Rodolfo Pereira is a web programmer specialized in backend programming. He believes that programming is one of the best things in life, and so makes it one of his main hobbies. After all, having fun while working is not a bad idea, don't you think? Rick Viscomi is a frontend engineer with a background in web performance. He studied Computer Science at the Binghamton University, where he created and sold a popular course scheduling web application called BingBuilder. He is also an open source developer and has open sourced two projects: trunk8, an intelligent text truncation plugin to jQuery, and Red Dwarf, a Google Maps heatmap tool for visualizing the GitHub project popularity. Since 2013, he has been a web developer at Google, where he works on improving the speed of YouTube pages and strengthening the frontend infrastructure. www.PacktPub.com Support files, eBooks, discount offers, and more You might want to visit www.PacktPub.com for support files and downloads related to your book. Did you know that Packt offers eBook versions of every book published, with PDF and ePub files available? You can upgrade to the eBook version at www.PacktPub.com and as a print book customer, you are entitled to a discount on the eBook copy. Get in touch with us at [email protected] for more details. 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Table of Contents Preface 1 Chapter 1: Google Maps JavaScript API Basics 5 Introduction 5 Creating a simple map in a custom DIV element 6 Creating a simple fullscreen map 11 Moving from the Web to mobile devices 13 Changing map properties programmatically 16 Changing base maps 21 Chapter 2: Adding Raster Layers 25 Introduction 25 Styling of Google base maps 26 Using different tile sources as base maps 33 Adding tile overlays to maps 40 Adding image overlays to maps 44 Changing the transparency of overlays 48 Creating a heat map 50 Adding the traffic layer 56 Adding the transit layer 58 Adding the bicycling layer 60 Adding the weather and cloud layers 62 Adding the Panoramio layer 65 Chapter 3: Adding Vector Layers 69 Introduction 69 Adding markers to maps 70 Adding popups to markers or maps 74 Adding lines to maps 77