Using OpenStreetMap

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Problem:

You want to use OpenStreetMap (OSM) map data to display maps in your application.

Solution:

Use the third-party osmdroid library to interact with OpenStreetMap data.

Discussion:

OpenStreetMap is a free, editable map of the world. The OpenStreetMapView is a (almost) full/free replacement for Android's MapView class. See the osmdroid googlecode page for more details. The capabilities of OSM and Google maps are similar; some people prefer OSM because of the fewer limitations on what you can do with the data. For example, you are forbidden from using Google Map data for turn-by-turn navigation, because much of Google's data is licensed from commercial GPS data services. See http://www.openstreetmap.org/about for more information.

To use OSM in your android app, you need to include two jars in the Android project namely, osmdroid-android-x.xx.jar and slf4j-android-1.5.8.jar. OSMDroid is a set of tools for OpenStreetMap data; SLF4J is (yet another) simplified logging facade. These can be downloaded from the links below:

• osmdroid jar file.
• slf4j jar file.

Or you can use the Maven artifact (see Hello World - Maven Version), which is currently:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.osmdroid</groupId>
    <artifactId>osmdroid-android</artifactId>
    <version>4.2</version>
</dependency>

See Referencing libraries to implement external functionality to learn how to use external libraries in your Android project.

After adding the JARs to the project we can start coding.

• You need to add a OSM MapView to an XML layout like this:

<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
   android:orientation="vertical"
   android:layout_width="fill_parent"
   android:layout_height="fill_parent">
	<org.osmdroid.views.MapView
		android:layout_width="fill_parent"
		android:layout_height="fill_parent"
		android:id="@+id/mapview">
	</org.osmdroid.views.MapView>
</LinearLayout>

• Also include the ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE and INTERNET permissions in the AndroidManifest:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />

• Now we have to use this MapView in the Activity code. This is done exactly as you would do in the case of Google maps.

private MapView mapView;
private MapController mapController;
mapView = (MapView) this.findViewById(R.id.mapview);
mapView.setBuiltInZoomControls(true);
mapView.setMultiTouchControls(true);
mapController = this.mapView.getController();
mapController.setZoom(2);

Once you are done with the code, go ahead and run it! This is how the application should look:

Download:

The source code for this project is in the Android Cookbook repository, http://github.com/IanDarwin/Android-Cookbook-Examples/,in the subdirectory OSMIntro.