Downloading/Caching Google Maps for Offline Use

Downloading/Caching Google Maps for Offline Use

Is it only possible to do this via the Google Maps 5 application and not the API without violating the ToS?

Correct, though AFAIK it's not even physically possible with the API.

How to cache Google map tiles for offline usage?

Unfortunately, I found this link which appears to indicate that we cannot cache these locally, therefore making this question moot.

http://support.google.com/enterprise/doc/gme/terms/maps_purchase_agreement.html

4.4 Cache Restrictions. Customer may not pre-fetch, retrieve, cache, index, or store any Content, or portion of the Services with the exception being Customer may store limited amounts of Content solely to improve the performance of the Customer Implementation due to network latency, and only if Customer does so temporarily, securely, and in a manner that (a) does not permit use of the Content outside of the Services; (b) is session-based only (once the browser is closed, any additional storage is prohibited); (c) does not manipulate or aggregate any Content or portion of the Services; (d) does not prevent Google from accurately tracking Page Views; and (e) does not modify or adjust attribution in any way.

So it appears we cannot use Google map tiles offline, legally.

Use google maps offline maps (cache) in Google Maps Android API

You need to create your own TileProvider and access tiles locally. Check this documentation.

Here are some related threads that may help you:

• Using the android Google Maps API v2 as a viewer of offline tiles: is it possible?
• Offline mode for android app using google maps api
• TileProvider using local tiles

Check this video tutorial about caching and this example from GitHub.

You can also use osmdroid which is a replacement for Android's MapView class. It also includes a modular tile provider system with support for numerous online and offline tile sources and overlay support with built-in overlays for plotting icons, tracking location, and drawing shapes. Here is the tutorial.

org.osmdroid.views.MapView mapView = (org.osmdroid.views.MapView) findViewById(R.id.map_view); //resolve the map view by id given in the layout
mapView.setTileSource(new OnlineTileSourceBase("Google Maps", ResourceProxy.string.unknown, 1, 20, 256, ".png", "http://mt3.google.com/vt/v=w2.97") {   
    @Override
    public String getTileURLString(final MapTile aTile) {
        /*
         * GOOGLE MAPS URL looks like
         *  base url        const   x   y    zoom
         * http://mt3.google.com/vt/v=w2.97&x=74327&y=50500&z=17
         */
        return getBaseUrl() + "&x=" + aTile.getX() + "&y=" + aTile.getY() + "&z=" + aTile.getZoomLevel();
    }
});
mapView.setUseDataConnection(false); //this actually makes the controller use only offline tiles

Hope this helps!

How to cache/download google map v2 tile programmatically?

According this 10.1.3(b) you can do it temporally on mobile device.

This project implement it, I can't provide particular example but you can dig in into it coz it open-source.

Save google map for offline use

I have one solution. We can save map as tiles using UrlTileProvider. It saves the map tiles, based on the zooming level and x and y axis covered area in your screen.

TileProvider tileProvider = new UrlTileProvider(256, 256) {
    @Override
    public URL getTileUrl(int x, int y, int zoom) {

        String s = String.format(
                "http://my.image.server/images/%d%d%d.png", zoom, x, y);

        if (!checkTileExists(x, y, zoom)) {
            return null;
        }

        try {
            return new URL(s);
        } catch (MalformedURLException e) {
            throw new AssertionError(e);
        }
    }

    private boolean checkTileExists(int x, int y, int zoom) {
        int minZoom = 12;
        int maxZoom = 16;

        if ((zoom < minZoom || zoom > maxZoom)) {
            return false;
        }

        return true;

    }
};

tileOverlay = map.addTileOverlay(new TileOverlayOptions()
        .tileProvider(tileProvider));

---

Related Topics