Partager via

Mobile Web MapPoint is Magic Mate - Geez, now this stuff is cool!! See sample code...

  • Article

Ok, I'll admit it, I've been putting off trying out MapPoint for quite some time but last week I had a "Mapping" customer opportunity so with the help of Andrew's Marvellous MapPoint Posting I dived in and I was amazed just how easy it was to get going with MapPoint.

You can build with Visual Studio 2003 or 2005. 

If you go down the VS 2005 route then you need to be aware of an issue with the auto generated MapPoint Web Services Proxy - the MapPoint WSDL describes 4 services each with different end points but there is a bug in the VS 2005 Proxy generator and all the end points end up with the same URI. So check out Andrew's and Rob's work around before heading down the VS 2005 route - they are simple enough and will save you time and frustration...

I've put the code for this sample on Mr Neimke's most excellent Project Distributor site here, feel free to download it, it's licensed under the "Do what you want you with the code, no liability accepted, no guarantees" it's a sample ok and not a lot of code:-) You'll need to plug in your own MapPoint (free trail) account details in to the sample code, if you are a MSDN Subscriber then you can sign up for a trail account here.

The maps are optimised for your average mobile phone screen size and I've implemented getting a map, getting a route plus directions and zoom in and out capability.

For more MapPoint resources check out https://msdn.microsoft.com/mappoint/, you can download the MapPoint SDK from here, it does specify Visual Studio 2003, but it installs just fine on VS 2005, it doesn't show up in the Search Contents, but it's there, the SDK is documentation only, you can also view it online here.

For a limited time I'll have the sample app running on the web, tap https://tinyurl.com/9ksjm into your phone's browser or on ya PC, it's set up for Australian Maps but it will give you an idea how it works.

The app was built ASP.NET V2 App using the Mobile Web Forms/Controls, the only thing I did over and above using the controls out of the box was in the web.config file to set the session state to cookieless (<sessionState cookieless="true" regenerateExpiredSessionId="true" />) as I found that some phones and emulators (www.openwave.com) struggled with cookies.

The size of the maps returned are optimised for a mobile phone, enjoy and if you get a chance to try the app at https://tinyurl.com/9ksjm then leave me a comment against this post - good/bad/make-model of phone etc...

PS, you'll find developer info on the recently announced Virtual Earth off the main MapPoint site as well.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    August 02, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    August 02, 2005
    Hey Cindy, cool, if you are happy then so am I:-) Have a great day!!
  • Anonymous
    August 02, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    May 11, 2007
    Dave Glover , has added a nice little MapPoint demo online. The demo is written in VS2005 and you can