MadClouds

MapQuest JavaScript API 5.3 – SSL Access

Monday, May 18th, 2009 | Technology | No Comments

MapQuest has just updated their JavaScript API 5.3 to allow SSL access. The lack of SSL support was causing an immense hurdle for us here at 24 Hour Fitness.  We had to implement some undesired conditionals to switch between the interactive JavaScript maps and the static Java maps depending on the type of access, http or https.  I stumbled upon this gem about a week ago when I randomly called up MapQuest’s technical support line (800-873-2418) to discuss SSL access for their Flex API (supported).  The tech rep informed me that they made the change that very morning.  It took me a while to get some time to correct our workaround.

No additional code is needed to enable SSL access for the JavaScript maps.  As long as you’re reference version API version 5.3 you have SSL access.  Make sure you include any https pages that will be utilizing the SSL maps in your MapQuest account under the referrers list.

This afternoon I was able to make the changes necessary to utilize MapQuest’s SSL changes which will go live within the next few weeks.

Tags: API, Job, Mapquest

MapQuest Flash/Flex API – Customize POI

Monday, May 11th, 2009 | Technology, Tutorials | 1 Comment

Changing the default POI in the MapQuest Flash/Flex API is pretty easy.  The MapQuest POI API has built in methods to replace the default POI icon image, as well as a few other properties like the size, location and label of that POI.  We’ll our company wanted to really customize the POI to show a dynamic label that changed with our results.  I have successfully achieved this result with MapQuest’s JavaScript API on our jsp pages, but recently I’ve been working on a new Flex project that uses MapQuest’s services to show our clubs.  The MapQuest documentation doesn’t provide a lot of insight on how to customize the POI label and the forums doesn’t explicitly tell you how to achieve this.  So after a little tinkering I was able to get the desired results.  It all comes down to overloading the POI class.

Inside our Flex project I created a new Action Script class called “POIExtended.as” which extends the Poi class:

public class POIExtended extends Poi
{
public function POIExtended(latLng:IPointLL, mapIcon:MapIcon=null)
{
super(latLng, mapIcon);
}

Inside this class I overrode the “setLabel()” method:

override public function setLabel(label:String, format:TextFormat = null): void {

var textField:TextField;

var mapIcon:MapIcon = this.getIcon();

textField = new TextField();
textField.text = label;
textField.width=30;
textField.height=30;
textField.y = 4;
textField.x = 3;
textField.mouseEnabled = false;

if (format) {
textField.setTextFormat(format);
}

mapIcon.addChild(textField);

}

This code moves the label assigned to the POI to the center of the icon.  I ran into a problem where the mouse over area on the POI was too big, causing a huge area that targeted the POI.  By limiting the height and width to a size just smaller then the POI icon image and disabling the mouse, it fixed this problem.

Tags: API, flex, Job, Mapquest

API 5.3 – Update

Thursday, August 7th, 2008 | General | No Comments

So I’ve been making some serious progress with the mapquest API 5.3 upgrade over the past two days.  It looks like for our End of August release I will be implementing:

• Replace all static maps with interactive maps
• Popup information
• Zoom and Pan controls
• Simple mouse over events
• Custom Icons

 Although not as optimized/organized as I would like it looks like I have included all of the requirements:

New map using MapQuest API 5.3

Old Mapquest Club Finder

Tags: API, Job, Mapquest