{"id":126,"date":"2017-11-03T05:25:33","date_gmt":"2017-11-03T05:25:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/thewayiseeit\/?p=126"},"modified":"2017-11-08T05:42:58","modified_gmt":"2017-11-08T05:42:58","slug":"126","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/thewayiseeit\/2017\/11\/03\/126\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Our Way Through the Google Maps API"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/avatars2.githubusercontent.com\/u\/3717923?s=400&amp;v=4\" alt=\"Image result for google map api\" width=\"238\" height=\"238\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I dug deeper on the Google Maps API and found a lot of what I already knew about it, but a decent amount that I hadn&#8217;t looked into. Since the usability of this API is pretty dependent on your intended use, examining some of these pros and cons will be helpful.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #00ff00;\">The Good<\/span><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Documentation:\u00a0<\/strong>The Google Maps API has strong documentation. I would expect no less from an API created by Google, but it is still nice to have, since navigating through an API without one is incredibly difficult, if not impossible.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Interface:<\/strong> It is stupidly easy to make the good-looking Google Maps interface we&#8217;ve all come to know and love. Very little work needs to be done on the developer&#8217;s end to achieve this, and it ends up looking very professional.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/cnet2.cbsistatic.com\/img\/H_zPLL8-QTZOLxJvgHQ1Jkz0EgY=\/830x467\/2013\/07\/10\/f0bcef02-67c2-11e3-a665-14feb5ca9861\/maps_routemap.png\" alt=\"Image result for google map\" \/>Courtesy of:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/cnet2.cbsistatic.com\/img\/H_zPLL8-QTZOLxJvgHQ1Jkz0EgY=\/830x467\/2013\/07\/10\/f0bcef02-67c2-11e3-a665-14feb5ca9861\/maps_routemap.png\">CNET<\/a><\/li>\n<li><strong>Calculations\/Functions:\u00a0<\/strong>The functions and calculations for distances, geolocation, etc. are both intuitive and well documented, making their integration pretty straightforward for the developer.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">The Bad<\/span><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Daily Limit:\u00a0<\/strong>There is a daily limit of 25,000 map loads per account per day. From there, it is an additional $0.50 per 1,000 map loads in a day, up to 100,000 map loads. While this pricing is reasonable, if you are trying to build a highly scaled application with a lot of map loads, that price is going to add up quickly.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Trial setup:\u00a0<\/strong>This sort of goes along with the daily limit con, but it&#8217;s still worth noting. The Google Maps API is structured as sort of a trial version. This isn&#8217;t inherently a bad thing, but you&#8217;ll have to dish out quite a bit of money if you want access to all of the Google Maps API&#8217;s bells and whistles.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All in all, the Google Maps API has a lot of power behind it. It would work out great for a really small-scale application or just tinkering around, but to access all of the power it has to offer comes at a hefty price. If nothing else, I definitely recommend digging through this API to at least see what&#8217;s happening when Siri gives you driving instructions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I dug deeper on the Google Maps API and found a lot of what I already knew about it, but a decent amount that I hadn&#8217;t looked into. Since the usability of this API is pretty dependent on your intended use, examining some of these pros and cons will be helpful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7455,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[622124],"tags":[631107,186,2599,922,2613,305],"class_list":["post-126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-application-programming-interfaces-api","tag-api","tag-google","tag-location","tag-maps","tag-review","tag-website"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/thewayiseeit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/thewayiseeit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/thewayiseeit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/thewayiseeit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7455"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/thewayiseeit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/thewayiseeit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/thewayiseeit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions\/133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/thewayiseeit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/thewayiseeit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/thewayiseeit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}