Introduction and examples

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Revision as of 15:24, 25 July 2013 by jw35 (talk | contribs) (→‎Basic use: Note that most URLs can be copied and re-used)
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Basic use

  • The map 'frontpage': http://map.cam.ac.uk/.
  • You can search for most things and once you've found something you'll also get addresses and other contact details.
  • Clicking shows a popup menu that, among other things, lets you see what's nearby and can mark a single location on the map.
  • The map automatically adapts for display on small-screen devices
  • Most views have individual URLs that can be copied and used elsewhere (on web pages, in emails, etc.)

API for linking to maps

The front page URL exposes a URL for linking to particular views based on searches - see The Map URL API for details. For example:

There's an extended search syntax, for example

...or based on underlying geographic OSM identifiers, which are based on Planon IDs for University buildings and which cover sites, buildings and entrances

[There's an interactive browser that will let you explore the map's geographic database to help find these various identifiers]

...or on map institution identifiers:

...or based on physical areas

Map URLs can also have a fragment part consisting of a hash followed by further information. The fragment part comprises either one to five numbers, or another URL. The numbers control where the map is displayed initially - for example here's a map showing the Hopkinson Lecture Theatre but scaled and centred to also show the station:



(A URL provides an overlay, created manually, using UCamGeoJSON or interactively using 'Annotate the map'.

Embedding Maps

All of the URL's above can be used as the source for an iframe to embed the corresponding map in a particular page - see The Embedding API for details.

For example this: 

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>

<head>
<title>Iframe test</title>
<style type="text/css">
#map {
  width: 400px;
  height: 400px;
  border: 1px solid black;
}
</style>
</head>

<body> 

<iframe id="map" src="http://map.cam.ac.uk/Computing+Service">
</iframe>

</body>

</html>

Produces a page like this.

Here's a further example: the normal UCS 'Where we are' page uses the map embedded in an <iframe>.

Tile API

The tiles making up the map are freely available - see The Tile API.

Here are some of the tiles that make up the city centre.

They follow the conventions of OpenStreetMap and other similar systems and so can be consumed in various ways. Here are some examples using third-party map APIs:

Index API

There's an API for accessing the data in the map's index - see The Database API. It uses similar queries to those used to draw and embed maps and returns results in JSON format. To ease experimentation you can add '&debug=1' to all index API queries to have results displayed in a browser rather than exported as JSON files. Here are some examples based on the map URLs above:

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