Android – Maps External Library

To make it easier for you to add powerful mapping capabilities to your application, the Google APIs add-on includes a Maps external library, com.google.android.maps. The classes of the Maps library offer built-in downloading, rendering, and caching of Maps tiles, as well as a variety of display options and controls.

The key class in the Maps library is MapView, a subclass of ViewGroup in the Android standard library. A MapView displays a map with data obtained from the Google Maps service. When the MapView has focus, it can capture keypresses and touch gestures to pan and zoom the map automatically, including handling network requests for additional maps tiles. It also provides all of the UI elements necessary for users to control the map. Your application can also use MapView class methods to control the MapView programmatically and draw a number of Overlay types on top of the map.

In general, the MapView class provides a wrapper around the Google Maps API that lets your application manipulate Google Maps data through class methods, and it lets you work with Maps data as you would other types of Views.

The Maps external library is not part of the standard Android library, so it may not be present on some compliant Android-powered devices. Similarly, the Maps external library is not included in the standard Android library provided in the SDK. The Google APIs add-on provides the Maps library to you so that you can develop, build, and run maps-based applications in the Android SDK, with full access to Google Maps data.