Home > Adobe AIR, Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, Xuland > FINALLY, Flash Maps for both iOS & Android for Flex & AIR Mobile Projects

FINALLY, Flash Maps for both iOS & Android for Flex & AIR Mobile Projects

After recently diving into Flex 4.5.1 and starting several mobile AIR-based projects, I ran into an issue with the Google Maps SDK when testing under iOS devices.

Long story short, it didn’t work.

The Google Maps Flash API works great under Android when the mobile project is deployed as an AIR-based application, but when compiled through the PFI (Packager for iPhone) bundled into AIR 2.7 it simply doesn’t ever load.

After a little investigation, the most likely cause was the fact that the Google Maps Flex API attempts to load external SWF’s at runtime from the Google map servers, which is strictly forbidden by Apple’s terms of service thus rendering this functionality completely disabled.

This functionality works fine under Android devices and was actually a pleasure to use, however without iOS, the joy of working with Adobe’s new Flex 4.5.1 SDK quickly subsides and is replaced by frustration.

There are workarounds for iOS, namely through the usage of the JavaScript-based Google Maps SDK and Flex 4.5′s own StageWebView class which can display external HTML content over the Flash content.

Unfortunately, Flex cannot interact with StageWebView content making it very difficult for some apps to function normally as they would in a normal Flash-based SWF rendered through the browser. My own application, Xuland, which depends heavily on the Google Maps SDK required many changes before I could test it’s mobile-version on my iPad.

I can get by with StageWebView, but I prefer a Map object that Flex can interact with directly, apply markers, dynamically zoom or geolocate, etc without having to re-load a URL from my external web-server.

Just today, MapQuest has released a Flex-version of it’s Flash Maps API which supposedly works well under both iOS and Android. I haven’t tested this but I will later tonight for sure ;)

For everyone else, here’s a link to MapQuest’s Developer Reference page and API:

MapQuest Developer Network:
http://developer.mapquest.com/web/products/beta

MapQuest Flash Map Mobile API:
http://developer.mapquest.com/content/as3/v7/7.0.2_MQ_MOBILE_B1/documentation/devref/index.html

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Categories: Adobe AIR, Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, Xuland Tags:
  1. July 18th, 2011 at 18:34 | #1

    That’s great news. Do you know if the EULA will allow you to sell the app? The Gmaps API prevents this.

  2. July 19th, 2011 at 10:10 | #2

    this is great, while I have never been a fan of MapQuest it is good news that mapping is becoming available to Flash Mobile apps

  3. July 19th, 2011 at 10:45 | #3

    Well you can use the Google Maps API currently in Android-based mobile apps and I have seen successful attempts using other mapping software like ESRI (see Adobe’s own MuniTracker: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/samples/muni-tracker.html)

  4. July 25th, 2011 at 14:53 | #4

    Still a shame we can’t use Google Maps for iOS through Flash Builder as a Map Object.

  5. July 27th, 2011 at 21:56 | #5

    Flash

  6. July 27th, 2011 at 21:59 | #6

    Erich Cervantez :
    Well you can use the Google Maps API currently in Android-based mobile apps and I have seen successful attempts using other mapping software like ESRI (see Adobe’s own MuniTracker: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/samples/muni-tracker.html)

    Erich Cervantez :
    Well you can use the Google Maps API currently in Android-based mobile apps and I have seen successful attempts using other mapping software like ESRI (see Adobe’s own MuniTracker: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/samples/muni-tracker.html)

    Flash

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