The Interactive Maps JavaScript API based on Leaflet JS helps render and display map tiles while customizing the map's look and feel on mobile or web browser. Leaflet is the leading open-source JavaScript library for mobile-friendly interactive maps i.e. easy to use & high on performance. It is a collection of classes and functions that can be used to implement a host of map features.
Features:Please Note: MapmyIndia may extend and enhance functionality for its interactive map API in future, which will be clearly documented in this section, and which will be available through the MapmyIndia.Map class and MapmyIndia.* set of classes generally.
Now that you’re all caught up with the features let’s get down right to them and look at how can you integrate our Interactive Map to your Website from scratch.
The easiest way to start loading maps in a web page is with a “Hello World” sample code, you can download or view a working “Hello World” sample from the links above:
Follow the below steps to integrate MapmyIndia interactive Maps into your existing code base or even a File -> New Project.
The easiest way to start loading maps in a web page is with a “Hello World” sample code, you can download or view a working “Hello World” sample from the links above:
The true hello world in case of a map scenario is plotting a pushpin that says hello world on click. So, to add a marker to the map, simply add the line of code below to the JavaScript:
Where,
L is the global Leaflet singleton (class/object),
28.61, 77.23 is the latitude and longitude of the location of the pushpin aka marker,
map is the defined global instance of the initialized MapmyIndia interactive Map.
Please Note: -Once you initialize a MapmyIndia Map, you can access all Leaflet functionalities through the, 'L' and passing it the 'map' variable to initialize the leaflet into
- MapmyIndia Map. More documentation on Leaflet and plugins are available at leafletjs.org.
*All Leaflet functionality will work with MapmyIndia Interactive Map API. - The code shown will display a map centred on New Delhi, India. You need to obtain an API key by signing up for API usage to view a demo or use the sample code.
You can interact with properties of the Map we provide to suite your case scenarios and add additional customizability to your Map layer and the features it may have to offer on the flipside, functions are a quick go to in case of an event. We’ll talk about events in just a bit. So, let’s get down right to them,
In the JavaScript of Map Initialization section of getting started you would have seen
Functions on the other hand help to provide desired results for the Map. Below is the Table of some common methods you might need to know to get a jump start on things while working with Interactive Maps.
| S.No | Function Name | Action | Returns |
| 1 | getZoom() | Returns the current zoom level of the map view | Number |
| 2 | getCenter() | Returns the geographical center of the map view | LatLng |
| 3 | panTo(<LatLng> latlng, <Pan options> options?) | Pans the map to a given center. | - |
| 4 | setView(LatLng latlng) | Sets the view of the Map to the provided Point | - |
| 5 | fitBounds(latLngBounds bounds) | Scopes the Map to provided bounds | - |
| 6 | zoomIn() | Zooms in the Map | - |
| 7 | zoomOut() | Zooms out the Map | - |
| 8 | setZoom() | Sets the Zoom level of the Map | - |
| 9 | getBounds() | Gets the Bounds of the current viewing section of the Map | LatLngBounds |
So, in a joist, map functions like normal programming language functions provide a way or a procedure to get interact with Map and provide with substantial data.
Now that we know a little bit about properties and functions and how they interact let’s look at events and how do they fit in to this picture that will allow you to get the desired result.
Events are basically Call-backs provided by UI elements or your own custom code base that tell you that something needs to be done. The most commonly used events or Call-backs are as below:
| S.No | Event Name | Type of Event | When is it Fired |
| 1 | resize | ResizeEvent | Fired when the map is resized. |
| 2 | load | Event | Fired when the map is initialized (when its center and zoom are set for the first time). |
| 3 | zoom | Event | Fired repeatedly during any change in zoom level, including zoom and fly animations. |
| 4 | move | Event | Fired repeatedly during any movement of the map, including pan and fly animations. |
| 5 | click | MouseEvent | Fired when the user clicks (or taps) the map. |
| 6 | dblclick | MouseEvent | Fired when the user double-clicks (or double-taps) the map. |
| 7 | mousedown | MouseEvent | Fired when the user pushes the mouse button on the map. |
| 8 | mouseup | MouseEvent | Fired when the user releases the mouse button on the map. |
| 9 | mouseover | MouseEvent | Fired when the mouse enters the map. |
| 10 | mouseout | MouseEvent | Fired when the mouse leaves the map. |
| 11 | contextmenu | MouseEvent | Fired when the user pushes the right mouse button on the map, prevents default browser context menu from showing if there are listeners on this event. Also, fired on mobile when the user holds a single touch for a second (also called long press). |
| 12 | keypress | KeyboardEvent | Fired when the user presses a key from the keyboard while the map is focused. |
Please Note: The above-mentioned events are just a small portion of the all supported events, but to get a jump start at things we think these would get you a long way without losing the sight of your final goal.
For more information on events and the list of all the events supported you can have a quick look at the events supported by leaflets in the leaflet documentations and we support all features and functions provided by leaflet.
That being said, let’s have a quick look on how to handle events for a mouse click. Let’s get started:
So after Map Initialization in your JavaScript code, (the map variable if following the getting started sample) you need to register for a click event of the map to listen or get a call-back each time the event happens. To do so add the below code to your JavaScript code:
As from the above code,
-
map is the global variable of the initialized map. See the Initializing of the Map section in the Getting Started Module for more details.
-
click is the name of the event we want to register to, to subscribe to other events simply replace the click with any other event name from the above table or the leaflet documentation.
-
e are the arguments that are passed in to the event which contain information regarding the event. In this case, it contains the Latitude and Longitude of the point on map that was clicked
For a detailed implementation of events and them interacting with the properties and functions have a look at the sample code or a demo or even download a sample code from the links above.
Now that you’re all started up, next we’ll have a look at things from a more functionality point of view.
We’ve got you up to speed with all the basics you might be needing to implement your own Interactive Map leveraging MapmyIndia’s Interactive Map API. Now let’s look at what all can you add on to your interactive map to make it tailor made for your use cases.
Markers are effortless way of pointing to a location, so getting right to it, you can go ahead and add markers that we provide out of the box but just in case you want to add your own, we’ve got that covered for you as well. There are 3 main categories of markers that you can add namely,
- Stock Marker: The one you get out of the box using our interactive maps API and you can select from a lot of choices.
- Custom Marker: Just in case you want to provide your own markers, we’ve handled that for you as well.
- HTML Marker: In case you don’t want to add in an image you can use HTML to create a marker and then plot it on the map as well.
First, let’s have a look at how to add a stock marker and then we’ll build from there. So, by leveraging the events discussed above let’s try to create a Marker at the dblclick event of the Map, let’s get started:
So after Map initialization as shown above write up a function using the guidelines discussed above to add a single Marker, something like below:
Now that you’ve written the JavaScript code for adding a new Marker let’s call this function in the dblclick event of the Map, something like below:
where,
marker is a global variable defined in the JavaScript as var marker = [ ]
Also, mk.bindPopup(title); from the code above is for pop-up window or info window, we’ll talk about them in just a moment first let’s wrap this section up
Please Note: The image shows a default Marker with indexing, The indexing is achieved via the CSS you can edit the CSS to make your marker gel with your UI. We’re just covering the basics here, so you’ll have to write your own indexing logic for reference please refer to the code sample provided in the links above but in the CSS you can add something like below:
Now, before we move forward let’s quickly look at how to provide your own custom Marker (your own Image).
To do so, you can edit the addMarker() method to take in a custom image location instead of the default as done below:
Please Note: We’ve added the icon field in the parameters and passed it to the L.Marker
You need to now edit the dblclick event as below to pass in a custom marker:
Please Note: We’ve considered some example paths you can put your own.
Now, that you have a basic understanding of Markers, Functions and Events let’s talk about Info Windows or Pop-Ups.
Info Windows are a convenient way of showing data about a marker or in simple words what that marker stands for. The Native behaviour of a user to know about any marker is to try and click on it to know what it’s all about and showing an info window would be the way to go about it:
Please Note: MapmyIndia interactive map supports a default info window that you can leverage but we want you to have an option to customize your info window to fit in with your UI and you can do so in the CSS.
Remember mk.bindPopup(title); from the adding a marker section? Well this quick code snippet binds your info window to your marker so when you click the marker the info window pops open.
We’ll go through the code snippets here and for a quick sample or a demo you can follow up with the links on top. Let’s get down right to it then.
You can declare an info window in your CSS and write up a quick function to generate data in that info window and on marker click event simple open that info window. Sounds simple? Let’s have a look,
The above code simply generates an info window based on the tittle and content provided to it by pushing that data to the CSS. The info window is defined in the CSS as below:
Please Note: The above is the CSS for just the custom info window you can easily customize it by giving it your own CSS. The Default info window does not need any CSS, you can have a quick look at the default info window from the code sample in the links above.
Now that we’ve covered the CSS and the way the info window is generated let see how does that change the code where we define out Marker, Remember the code from Adding a Marker Segment? And mk.bindPopup(title); code snippet?
Now we can replace this by the below code:
and in the mk.click event add the below code:
This will open the info window attached to the marker.
In this section we went through what are info windows, how can we provide our own style to them, how can we modify the existing add a marker code to work with a info windows as well and lastly how to open up an info window on click event.
Info windows are just a small part of what we can use show our data in a map scenario we deal with more routes than textual data. Let’s have a look at polylines that help us to better represent the route data.
Polylines are a way of showing movement or transit on a map. We at MapmyIndia understand the ways you can leverage the features offered by a map and one among them is a Polyline. So, let’s get to it.
Polylines are continuous lines consisting of one or more line segments (preferably a geopath). To add a polyline, initialize map as shown in the previous sections and then create a data set. What is a data set? The Data set is the collection of points (latitude and longitude) over which you want the polyline to be drawn. Let’s have a look.
Now that we have a small data set ready, let’s get out polyline ready.
now let’s generate the polyline
Well in the above three code snippets, we’ve generated a data set for the polyline, then defined the basic outlook of the polyline using the polylineParam and then generated a polyline which takes in the data set and the basic outlook of the polyline. Now we’ll just add it to our map.
and now you have a working map that shows transit using polylines.
Please Note: We’ve hard coded the data set for the polyline but in real case scenarios you’ll need to get the data set on the fly or from a service and then you can leverage the events and functions we’ve learnt about to plot the polyline. Also, this is a very basic implementation of a polyline you might need to beautify your polyline or add transitions for your UI to look marvellous. Look at the plug-ins section to see about the plug-ins we offer to make your UI stand out.
The polyline is just the beginning but sometimes you’ll need to mark a territory to properly showcase your information. In such cases a polyline might not be the perfect fit but Polygons and Circles will be the apt choice. Let’s have a look at them.
Polygons are a way of showing a territory. In cases where you want to showcase data over an area, polygons are your best pick. You can use them to show Geozones as well.
To get started with Polygons initialize the Map as shown in the above sections and then in your JavaScript code follow the below code snippets.
It’s very like generating a polyline, the basic steps remain the same, create a Data set, generate a polygon and add it to the map. Let’s see how:
The above code creates a data set of all the points the polygon needs to be marking.
So, from the above code we’ve figured out how to use out of the box controls, events and basic functions to add a polygon to the map. But what if we want the user to interact with the map and draw a polygon himself? Because in real cases we would either get a polygon data from a service or a user would draw it to inform of his area of interest.
To suit this case, we provide a polygon drawer control out of the box through which the user can interact and draw a polygon for himself. Let’s look at how can you use this polygon drawer.
Please Note: You can see a detailed implementation of the control and it’s CSS along with HTML in the code sample we provide from the link on the top or if you want to see it in action you can do so from the see live demo link from the top.
Now that we’ve covered polygons let’s have a look at Circles which provide another way of showcasing territory.
Circles are way of marking a territory without too much interaction by the user. A circle only has two important values:
With the two values, you can easily define a quick area of interest on a map. So, let’s take a quick look at it So in your JavaScript code, add a function which looks something like below:
In the above code, we simply set the radius and the centre point and we define the diameter properties. Then we just add the Diameter to the map.
Please Note: the map.fitBounds(currentDiameter.getBounds()); code snippet just ensures the map is scoped to the circular shape. You might recollect the getBounds() from the functions sections we discussed above.
And that’s all that’s there to it. You have all the basics you need to get started and fiddle around with things to make your own implementation leveraging MapmyIndia’s Interactive Maps API.
It’s not rocket science, right?
These are just the basics of all but to enhance your experience you might just not want the basics. Let’s have a look at the plug-ins we offer to make your users feel amazing and that in turn benefits you.
Now that we’ve handled all the basics along with some controls and overlays you can use to better use the map, we would like to show you how can you extend functionalities of these controls and overlays to make your user experience rich.
Plug-Ins are the best way to extend functionality. You can add custom behaviours for controls or make them interact with other components to achieve desired output. Let’s look at the basic implementation of the plug-in or rather how to “Plug-In a Plug-In”.
With the two values, you can easily define a quick area of interest on a map. So, let’s take a quick look at it So in your JavaScript code, add a function which looks something like below:
To add any plug in to your project you necessarily need to add a reference to the CSS and the JS files. For each plug-in, the number of these files may vary depending upon the functionality the plug-in provides.
The MapmyIndia basic cluster provides basic implementation of the leaflet’s cluster functionality. To set the basic cluster up below is the file composition:
Now that we’ve seen the file structures let’s consider setting up a basic cluster solution leveraging the concepts we’ve learned in the above sections.
Step I: Map Initialization
The basic step for all plug-ins is to have a working MapmyIndia map integrated project. The best part is nothing changes. You set up the map the same way we did before in the getting started section above. So, if you’re following through the documentation from the top you’ve already done it and if not, you too already have a project that’s leveraging the MapmyIndia Interactive Map. Just in case you’ve done a File > New project, then please refer to the getting started section to initialize the map and that shall bring you up to speed.
Step II: Setting up your Data
To plot a cluster, you need a collection of location points (latitudes, longitudes). Without this, one would never be able to plot anything on a map so getting right to it, in the sample code and the live demo, we’ve taken the map bounds to and performed operations on it to generate random points
and we’ve written up a neat function that provides us with random location points based on the two collections of latitudes and longitudes we’ve defined globally based on the map bounds.
Please Note: In real world case scenarios you’ll probably be getting a collection of latitudes and longitudes from your location or data service that gives you data to be plotted. We’ve taken the above code just to generate random points.
Let’s look at initializing your cluster in the next section.
Step III: Initializing your cluster
So now that we have basic data we’ll create a cluster and pass in the collection of points to which the plug-in will process on and create the cluster for us.
In the above code of cluster initialization let’s look at what are the various properties doing:
Step IV: Adding points to the Cluster and Cluster to the Map
Now, we simple pass in the collection of points we get from our data service to our markerClusters as below:
and simple add the cluster layer to the map as below:
and that’s it. Now you have your basic cluster initialized and fully loaded.
Please Note: At any time to get the child markers in any cluster do a quick layer.getAllChildMarkers(); to get all child markers contained by a layer. This will return you a collection of markers.
Finally: Going one step further
You know what you can do? You can leverage the knowledge you gained from the above sections and apply it to the plug-in by creating an event to the markerCluster to get more out of your plug-ins. For e.g.
you can listen to these by defining them like below:
Also, you can add or remove markers from any cluster if need be. As a matter of fact, you can add or remove an entire cluster layer if your use case scenario is such. To do so, please refer to the code sample provided in the link.
Please Note:
1. We’re just covering the basic implementation here. For a more detailed code snippet and explanation please refer to the code sample or the live demo from the links above.
2. There is a performance criteria attached to this plug-in. If you have less than 25K (25 thousand) markers and a light weight plug-in this will be an ideal pick but just in case there is a possibility that you’ll have more than 25K markers we would advise go for the MapmyIndia’s Advanced Cluster instead. That can handle enormous amount of data and that too with impressive performance. Let’s look at it next.
In the previous section, we looked at a basic cluster implementation. The advantage of it is that is light weight but on the flipside, it’s a very basic implementation and does not provide much customizability and it can’t handle large data sets. To overcome the above, we’ve got Advanced Cluster. Also based on the leaflet implementation, the MapmyIndia Advanced cluster can handle large data sets with impressive performance. Alongside this, the advanced cluster also provides some cool tweaks that can suit your use case scenarios. Let’s go through the implementation.
To set the advanced cluster up below is the file composition:
Now that we’ve seen the file structures let’s consider setting up an advanced cluster solution leveraging the concepts we’ve learned in the above sections.
Step I: Map Initialization
The basic step for all plug-ins is to have a working MapmyIndia map integrated project. The best part is nothing changes. You set up the map the same way we did before in the getting started section above. So, if you’re following through the documentation from the top you’ve already done it and if not, you too already have a project that’s leveraging the MapmyIndia Interactive Map. Just in case you’ve done a File > New project, then please refer to the getting started section to initialize the map and that shall bring you up to speed.
Step II: Initializing your cluster
First, we’ll create a cluster and pass in the collection of points to which the plug-in will process on and create the cluster for us. First things first let’s create a new instance of the PruneClusterForLeaflet.
Step III: Setting up your Data and Markers
To plot a cluster, you need a collection of location points (latitudes, longitudes). Without this, one would never be able to plot anything on a map so getting right to it, in the sample code and the live demo, we’ve taken a “size” variable that denotes the number of markers and then using a quick for loop we’re generating random marker points.
where centre is a variable we’ve defined to hold the map centre.
Please Note: in the above code we’re setting the marker data in the marker.data object. Where marker.data is the object and idx is the property we want
marker.data to contain and we’ve given it a value. You can give it more properties e.g. marker.data.name = “Hello”;
Now that we’ve got our data ready and all the markers we need to define the markers outlook. This is a little different than the basic cluster we had seen above. In advanced cluster, we have another property that takes in a function that helps to set the size and the image of the marker or even register for events.
Please Note: In real world case scenarios you’ll probably be getting a collection of latitudes and longitudes from your location or data service that gives you data to be plotted. We’ve taken the above code just to generate random points.
Now you simply need to add the cluster to the map as a layer.
and do a quick scoping of the map to the cluster as below:
and finally tell the plug-in to update the view with the below code:
Please Note: the ProcessView() will be called each time the cluster updates or changes.
Finally: Going one step further
You might want to customize a few things here and there. Good for us we’ve got this covered for you as well. In this section, we’ll look at a few code snippets through which you can handle small UI changes. For a more illustrative change in the UI consider modifying the CSS.
In the above code of cluster initialization let’s look at what are the various properties doing:
Please Note: For a more detailed code snippet follow the links provided above to see the sample code or see a live demo
In the previous section, we looked at clusters and their implementations. There will be cases where in you would want to get more of your polylines. For such a case scenario, we provide Decorated Polyline and Canvas Flow layer. Canvas flow layer we’ll talk about in a moment but first let’s look at what is decorated polyline and how can you leverage it.
To set the decorated polyline up below is the file composition:
Now that we’ve seen the file structures let’s consider setting up a decorated polyline solution leveraging the concepts we’ve learned in the above sections.
Step I: Map Initialization
The basic step for all plug-ins is to have a working MapmyIndia map integrated project. The best part is nothing changes. You set up the map the same way we did before in the getting started section above. So, if you’re following through the documentation from the top you’ve already done it and if not, you too already have a project that’s leveraging the MapmyIndia Interactive Map. Just in case you’ve done a File > New project, then please refer to the getting started section to initialize the map and that shall bring you up to speed.
Step II: Initializing your decorator
First, we’ll create a quick instance of the decorator that’ll oversee extending the capabilities of our polyline and add it to the map.
Step III: Setting up your Data and Polyline
The core requirement of data for this plug-in is the polyline and the polyline needs a collection of latitudes and longitudes. Follow the instructions in the Polylines section of the Overlays and Controls section for information on how to provide data for a polyline and add a polyline to the Map. More importantly we’ll look at the marker and its animation in the next section.
Step IV: Markers and Animations
The key to this plug-in is the marker and its animation. So, to do so we define an interval and pass in a decorator pattern as below:
As in the code we set in all the parameters that provide an animation on a defined marker. We advise not fidgeting with the offset, instead to handle speed of the animation we recommend changing the timespan of the animation.
To draw an arrow marker instead of the marker image simply replace the code marked as “Symbol Type” by the following code:
Finally: Going one step further Now let’s look at some quick customizing tips.
Please Note: For a more detailed code snippet follow the links provided above to see the sample code or see a live demo