Hi, my name is Angela Yu, and this is an introduction
to Google Maps Platform. This video is intended for use
by anyone interested in preparing for their future careers. In the next few minutes,
we're going to discuss how you can bring the power
of Google Maps into your applications. Many of you have probably
already used Google Maps either to look up a place
or to get directions in a web browser or on your mobile phone. As a developer building your own projects,
you might've thought about use cases where it would be helpful to know
where the user is, find what is nearby, or show where to find places or objects
that your app makes available. When you incorporate
location-based data into your app, you leverage all the investment
that Google puts into making that great experience you have
with the Google Maps apps and bring that richness into your app. Let me break down what it takes
to make the Google Maps experience you see today. At Google, we've been mapping
the world since 2005. Since then, we've invested heavily
in mapping the ever-changing world from providing street addresses
for the first time to residents of India, to displaying imagery
from the depths of the oceans to Mars, and even Pluto's moon. That's how we get
the coverage number you see here. So if you want your app to work
anywhere your users might be in the world, Google Maps Platform
is likely to have that area covered. On top of that, we invest a lot
in improving the accuracy and freshness of our data. Since launching Google Maps, we've expanded our Street View vehicles
to 88 countries, built advanced
machine learning capabilities, and created our Local Guides program all to increase how quickly we can keep up
with the changing world around us. When we decided to make
all this data available to developers for use in other apps, we grouped them
into three core API families: Maps brings the real world to your users
with customizable maps and Street View imagery; Places helps users discover the world
with rich metadata for over 150 million places, and enables them to find specific places
using phone numbers, addresses and real-time signals; Routes helps your users
find the best way to get from A to Z with comprehensive data
and real-time traffic. That was an overview of our APIs,
so let's try them out now. Let's start with the Maps APIs. The Maps JavaScript API
is our most used API because web developers use it
to build custom maps in their websites and web applications. The Embed API and Static API
provide easier ways to get our maps into your website. Street View API makes a 360-degree imagery
that we've captured available to your app. Mobile SDKs provide Android
and iOS-specific functions for displaying Maps in your mobile apps. Now, I'll show you some sample code
that would be used by a web developer to add a map to a web page. JavaScript is the most commonly used
language in web development, so I'll use simple JavaScript
inside the HTML code that is used for the skeleton of the page. This line is the first line
you'll need to add, which will ensure
that the rest of your JavaScript code calls the Maps JavaScript API. You'll see here that you need to create
an API key and paste it in here. Every project has its own unique API key to identify which project
is using the API. See these two videos for instructions
on how to enable Google Maps Platform APIs and generate an API key for your project. At the end of the line, there's a <i>callback</i>
which identifies which function in this page's code to call
when the JavaSript API has responded. We're keeping the code structure
really simple here. So all of the HTML, CSS
and JavaScript code is in one file. You'll find the <i>initMap</i> function
defined right here inside the <i>script</i> tag. What you see inside <i>initMap</i>
is that we create a <i>google.maps.Map</i> object called <i>map</i> and then attach it
to the HTML element with <i>id="map"</i>. Then I just open my HTML file
in a web browser and, ta-da, I can see a map on my web page. That's just the beginning. You can fully customize this map, such as turning on and off
visibility of various features; choosing different colors, like if you want your map
to have a Dark mode; add markers and shapes
that can be custom graphics or animated like any other element; and add Data layers
to display static or live data, like this map showing the live feed of recent earthquakes
and their magnitudes. That covers Maps. Now let's see what you can
get from the Places APIs. With the main Places API,
you can provide users data on location names, addresses, ratings,
reviews, and contact information. Our community of 60 million local guides makes more than
20 million contributions per day in our efforts to provide accurate,
reliable information. We also have the Time Zone API,
Geocoding API, and Geolocation API to give developers access
to more information about specific coordinates on the globe. Finally, the Places Library
for the Maps JavaScipt API brings Places data into your web maps, and the SDKs for Android and iOS
bring Places data into your mobile apps. So let's take a look
at how that looks in code. Last time, we used the JavaScript API to show how web developers
would use our APIs. This time, I'll show you
our web services APIs so that no matter
what language you're using, if you know how to call a REST API,
you can get a data response and use it in your app however you want. I'm going to use Postman, which is a language-independent tool
I use for organizing my REST API requests and testing for responses. But you can use your favorite method
or tool for testing API requests. In Postman, I'll create a new request. The most important field here
is where it says enter request URL. I'll get a sample web service URL
from one of the Places APIs called the Geocoding API, which takes an address or a pair
of latitude, longitude coordinates and returns the opposite. Paste that URL into the Postman field
and you'll see that any parameters can be edited, either in the URL
or in the Params fields below. This sample uses the address
of Google's headquarters. We'll use this Geocoding API
to request the latitude and longitude that corresponds to this exact address. Just like before,
I need to have an API key from my Google Cloud project
and paste that in here. I click Send and down below,
I can see the JSON response that was returned. I could've also asked for an XML response
if that worked better for my project. The JSON includes the full address, since I probably only typed
part of the address, in a couple of formats. And also, here in the geometry section
is a <i>location</i> object with a latitude and a longitude. So you can see, all I need
is to customize the request URL up here with two parameters, address and API key,
to get a lot of data back. Look here toward the bottom, there's a property called place ID-- that's a unique ID
that Google Maps Platform assigned to this place. So let's use the Place Details API
to learn more about it. I go to the Place Details documentation
and grab the request URL. It says here that output
should be replaced by either JSON or XML and there are two required parameters: place ID and key. I place that URL into Postman,
change "output" to "json" and replace "parameters"
with the two required fields. I'll copy the key
from my Geocoding request, but I'm going to use
a more interesting place ID to show you the rich data we get back
from the Place Details API. And you can see, as I change
the values in the Params, it updates the URL up top. Hit Send and let's look
at the response to find out what's one of my favorite
places in the world. Ah, it's in Maui. A placed called
Ululani's Hawaiian Shave Ice. Not only do we get its name and address,
but we also get its opening hours, pointers to photos
of the place that I can display, its current rating, and some reviews. Now I can choose what information
I'd want to display in my app, and I have the flexibility
to pick and choose which of these fields I want to show. Finally, we have the Routes APIs. Directions API provides directions
for driving, biking, or walking, and for public transit
in more than 3.8 million stations and 20,000 towns and cities. Not only do you get the same directions that are trusted by users
of the Google Maps app, but you also get travel times
and live traffic data. You can probably guess
what the Directions API looks like, where you provide an origin,
up to 25 optional waypoints, a destination, and your API key. Now, let's take a look
at the Distance Matrix API. This is something I was
really impressed by when I learned about it. It's great if you have
more complex use cases than a single origin
to a single destination. Remember how I said the Directions API
takes just one origin and one destination? Imagine you've got a bunch of people
in various locations and you need to figure out
the optimal combination to match each of those people
with an assignment in another location. Normally, it would be pretty complicated
to calculate the distance between each person
and their possible assignments, and then compare all
of those assignments and figure out which is the most efficient
permutation overall. Thankfully, the Distance Matrix API takes multiple origins
and multiple destinations and gives you the travel times
and distances for all combinations. With a single API call,
you can get all the data you need to make your assignment decisions
to optimize for distance or travel time. I'm going to show you a neat trick
in our documentation that will save you time
when looking up your API key. The Distance Matrix API page
has a sample request right here. I scroll to the end
where it says <i>YOUR_API_KEY,</i> and I click on those words. It brings up this Google Cloud Platform
project chooser and when I pick the project, it lets me choose
which API key I want to use, and puts it right into the sample request
on the Documentation page. Now, I can use the copy button and paste the whole request
into my code or into Postman. I don't have to type anything
and the sample request runs as is. You can see I only have one origin
and one destination in this request, but the API is designed for you to provide
multiple origins and multiple destinations as I described earlier. Finally, the Roads API
helps you snap points that may have imprecise GPS coordinates
to real roads nearby. We're always pushing the platform forward,
so when you build with our APIs, you can know that we'll be expanding them
so your apps can do more. One example of a new area for us
is game developers-- providing our data to allow developers
to bring the real world into their games, such as having realistic quests
around the Eiffel Tower. And the other way around, allowing developers
to bring their games into the real world with our Playable Locations API, so that players
can bring their mobile devices to a playable location
and encounter game characters, like this big green monster
in Time Square. I hope that gave you some inspiration
for ways you'd like to incorporate location-aware information
into your own apps. To get started with Google Maps Platform,
visit the links in the description below. Thanks for watching, and happy mapping. ♪ [outro music] ♪
