Map Examples

Allow your users to display the map in either raster or vector format:

Sample use case 1: Your app is designed to use raster tiles for map display. You want to update the app with the TomTom Map Display API raster tiles.

Sample use case 2: You want to take advantage of vector tile features such as map 2.5 D perspective, custom map styles, etc.

Sample use case 3: Your app runs on devices with different capabilities. You want to use vector tiles for map display on powerful devices and raster tiles on devices with less processing power.

Use the following code snippets in your app to display the map with raster or vector tiles.

Additionally, you can get details about the specific traffic flow or incident of the road fragment (e.g., current speed, travel times, etc.) from the Flow Segment Data service which is integrated in the Maps SDK. This service is designed to work alongside the traffic to support clickable flow and incidents data visualizations. This is handled for you in the Maps SDK. The SDK provides default implementation of trafficDelegate which is TTMapTrafficDelegateDefault.

By the default implementation, when you click on the specific traffic incident, a balloon with details is shown for incident flows:

The default implementation of an incident click listener zooms the map when the traffic cluster is clicked:

Traffic API Flow Tiles style types are represented in the SDK as an enum. The available traffic flow styles are the following:

Allow your user to see the map in different languages to make your app international. The language parameter determines the language of labels on the map. It does not affect any proper nouns, like the names of streets, plazas, etc. The list of the supported languages can be found at Default View Mapping.

Sample use case: You want to have all labels only in British English.

To change the language for the map:

Allow your user to see the map boundaries based on international or local country views. The local view is available for a particular area of the world that is considered as disputed by two or more countries. As a result, each country can show this area as a part of his country. List of the supported views can be found at Default View Mapping.

Sample use case: You want to display the local map view for Israel.

To change the geopolitical view for the map:

Allow your user to create and provide the map with one or more custom styles for vector map tiles.

Modify the default TomTom style

The best way to create a custom style is to modify the default TomTom style for vector maps using the Maputnik editor. You can find the JSON map style in the resources directory. The tutorial on how to modify the style is available for all Maps SDKs (for Android, iOS, and Web) at Creating custom vector map style. Note that after step 9 of the linked tutorial, you need to save the JSON file and place it in the resources directory of your app project.

Provide your style You can provide an external map style file on the server and provide the URL. Sprites and fonts should be stored locally in the application. Currently, we don’t support loading resources and fonts from a server.

Sample use case: You want to display a night-styled map at night or in a tunnel.

To change the style of the map:

Allow your users to dynamically toggle the visibility of map entities. You can hide map layers to get the level of detail you need and highlight the layers that are important for your use case.

Sample use case: You want to provide a clear map view for driving that focuses on the road network in your app. You can achieve this by switching off some map layers e.g., woodland, build-up areas, etc. You can turn these layers back on at run time to bring back the details for a better map viewing experience.

The following articles provide more information on map layer visibility and map layers available in the default style: Map layers, and Default style.

You can retrieve all layers available in the style or only those that match a provided regex. To filter, you can use the layer ID or source layer ID properties, as shown in the following examples:

Add layers and sources (e.g., GeoJSON, images) to the map in real time. This will allow you to dynamically change a map’s style in response to user interaction and context.

Sample use case 1: You want to add extra layers with building plans from your custom source.

Sample use case 2: You want to dynamically modify source parameters (e.g., the URL).

The Maps SDK for iOS allows you to create a layer and dynamically add it to the style, as shown in the following examples:

To create an Image source:

To hide a source or a layer from the style:

The Maps SDK for iOS makes it possible to select a visible feature within a GeoJSON layer. As a result you will get an object feature’s collection.

You can dynamically change the z-order of the layers on the map to make the layers important to your use case visible on top of other layers.

Sample use case : You placed images on the map in your app but your users can bring the route and the road network on top of the images to see what the route looks like in detail.

Retrieve data of a feature (e.g., ID, geometry) from layers in the style by querying for rendered features at a screen point, coordinates, or the screen rect within a specified layer in the style.

Sample use case 1: You want to display information if the user clicks on a layer that you added.

Sample use case 2: You want to return all visible features in a viewport.

To create a layer and dynamically add it to the style:

To query the style for specific layer features at a given coordinates call:

To query the style for specific layer features in a given screen rect e.g., viewport:

Allow your users to cluster image annotations for better visualization. By default, clustering is disabled.

Sample use case: You want to cluster images in the FeatureCollection type provided in GeoJSON.

To enable clustering you need to set:

and set the desired cluster radius:

Here you can see what the TTMapSource GeoJSON style file with enabled clustering looks like:

You also need to add the new TTMapStyle to the current style, that defines the behaviour when your features do not fulfill clustering contraints.

Please also remember if the feature "properties": {"icon": "jet_airplane_landing"} is set, you need to add the image to TTMapStyle as follows:

Sample use case: You want to add a background overlay under the cluster size.

You need to create TTMapLayer with the given content:

and add it to current map style.

Sample use case: You want to customize the cluster symbol text color, text size, and offset.

You need to define TTMapLayer with the given JSON content:

and add it to current map style.

Developers are not limited to only attaching a single map. You can put as many map objects as you want on the same page without any issues.

Sample use case: You want to display two independent maps in your app.

Allow your users to see the map either in 2.5D with the building heights enabled, or in 2D with building footprints.

Sample use case: Your application provides the possibility to display sophisticated visualization of the map with building heights (2.5D map) as well as display the map with building footprints (2D map).

The building heights data are available in Vector Map Tiles. The default TomTom map styles enable the display of building heights by default, but this can be disabled by switching off layers in the style.

Have a look at the detailed documentation for more information in [https://developer.tomtom.com/maps-api/maps-api-documentation-vector/tile]Vector Map Tiles and Map style.

In order to disable the display of the building heights, you need to switch off corresponding layers in the style. That means that the following layers would need to be switched off in the default TomTom style: "Subway Station 3D", "Place of worship 3D", "Railway Station 3D", "Government Administration Office 3D", "Other building 3D", "School building 3D", "Other town block 3D", "Factory building 3D", "Hospital building 3D", "Hotel building 3D", and "Cultural Facility 3D. This will work in runtime.

Use the following code snippets in your app to display building footprints (i.e., switch building heights off):

When you use the TomTomOnlineSDKMaps in your application, users will like to play with it in a variety of ways. In this section you will learn how to implement such actions and how to register for their callbacks.

Center the map in your mobile app either at the current coordinates or any other location at the zoom level of your choice.

Sample use case: You want to display the maps for selected cities in specific zoom levels. Your users should be able to easily switch between different locations.

Use the following code snippets in your app to display maps of different locations (in this case, the current location and the TomTom offices in Amsterdam and Berlin).

The example shows how to center the map on Amsterdam:

Set either 2D map perspective for typical map view mode, or 2.5D map perspective for custom scenarios such as moving the map.

Sample use case: You want to switch from 2D to 2.5D modes to support and follow the moving of the location in your app. Use the following code snippets in your app to switch between perspectives.

Note that switching between 2D and 3D mode only changes the perspective. The zoom level and map orientation are set with the methods described in the "Map centering" example.

Perspective ratio can be changed in value: false to true.

Implement any action you need to be triggered on one of the following map events:

To receive events you need to register id<TTMapViewDelegate> on map.

Sample use case: In your app, users invoke one behavior with a single press and another with a long press.

Use the following code snippets in your app to catch map events. In this example, the action is simply to display a toast with latitude and longitude on each map event. Of course, you can implement other cool features instead.

In this example you will see that a Toast with the latitude and longitude of a point that was clicked on the map, but you can utilize this information in your own manner.

Enable and disable gestures

You can disable gestures such as zooming, scrolling, and rotating in your application by setting up an integer mask on properties as shown in the following examples:

Disable zooming gesture

Disable the rotating gesture

Disable the scrolling gesture

You can turn off more than one gesture by setting up the mask on properties as shown in the following examples:

If you want to enable gestures, setup the integer mask on a property as shown in the following examples:

You can place custom images on the map using TTAnnotation. You can do that with a TTAnnotationManager which can be obtained from TTMapView. Use one of factory methods from TTAnnotation to create an annotation, then pass it to manager.

You can display icons using two different types:

Mixing icons of focal and decal modes is generally unsupported and advised against, as there are unresolvable depth-sorting issues and the results will not always look correct. It is safe to mix some modes, however, such as either of the decal modes with any of the standing modes. For performance purposes, it is recommended to use the same tag for the same images so they can be reused from cache.

Sample use case: In your app, you want to display a number of annotations to mark places on the map. Use the following code snippet to display a single annotation at specific coordinates on the map.

Thanks to this feature you can use GIFs as marker icons. For this purpose, you need to place your images in the assets folder and then use them in the following way:

You can change the anchoring point for your icon. The anchor specifies which point of an annotation image is attached to the map. The annotation will rotate around this anchoring point when rotating the map. You can use the default image representation of an annotation which is attached to the bottom height center width. You can change this behavior by TTAnnotationAnchor enumeration. For example, if you want to use a crosshair annotation image, you should set the anchor to TTAnnotationAnchorCenter

You can implement an observable of the annotation selected event. You can do that with the global delegate TTAnnotationDelegate for all annotations that have to be registered on TTAnnotationManager as in the following example:

The Maps SDK allows you to observe an annotation selected event. There is one global delegate TTAnnotationDelegate for all annotations that has to be registered on TTAnnotationManager as shown in the following example:

Allow your users to cluster annotations for better visualization. By default, annotations clustering is disabled. You can decide per each marker if it should be included in the clustering process or not (e.g., you want to have a few annotations that are never clustered). To manipulate marker clustering, use TTAnnotationManager obtained from TTMapView.

Sample use case: You want to display the distribution of parking spots across the city. Individual parking spots are shown only at higher zoom levels, otherwise data is clustered for better visualization.

To enable annotations clustering:

To flag a marker indicating that it should be clustered:

Examples are shown below:

Allow your users to display and customize balloons in a few lines of code.

Sample use case: You would like to learn more about a place on the map. Depending on the selected location, the app displays a balloon containing either text or additional information such as icons or pictures.

To display a balloon, attach a callout to a TTAnnotation. The map can display only one annotation at a time.

A callout can be triggered in two ways:

There can be only one selected annotation on the map at a time.

A callout can be closed in the following ways:

A callout is an instance of UIView that implements the TTCalloutView protocol. You can use one of the built-in callout views, such as the default TTCalloutViewSimple, or make your own custom balloon.

The default behavior for an annotation is to display an instance of TTCalloutViewSimple containing the annotation’s coordinates. You can change the following properties:

To change the default text of a simple callout, register your delegate on the annotation manager and override the viewForSelectedAnnotation method:

Although you can use default callouts, the SDK also allows you to create fully customizable ones. A callout is nothing more than a Cocoa UIView implementing the TTCalloutView protocol. Callouts can be built by either Interface Builder or programmatically.

This is an example of a custom callout:

Allow your users to draw shapes like circles, polygons, and polylines on your map to mark different areas on the map.

Sample use case: You are developing an app for a delivery company and need to illustrate ranges of the transportation area around different cities. What you need to do, for example, is to render circles around cities with radiuses indicating zones of deliveries. The details on the example implementation of shapes rendering are described below.

A TTMapView supports several shape overlays. These are:

Shape overlays are immutable i.e., once they have been created, their shapes cannot be changed (although you may change their visibility and color). If you want to change a shape, you must remove the existing shape and replace it with a new one.

It is the responsibility of the framework user to be conscientious about performance and how many shape overlays they are using. You should use as few shapes as possible, and hide or dispose of ones that are not being displayed. See the following code examples.

Code examples:

You can display a route on the map and customize its origin and destination icons. It is also possible to specify the fill color, outline color, and width of the route.

Sample use case: When you add the route, you would like to highlight the starting and the destination points. Also you would like to plan several routes simultaneously with different origin and destination points and use different icons.

Prerequisites:

TTMapView: The *mapView object was created and configured. Route coordinates are prepared.