tisdag 31 juli 2018

Volotile Azure Maps TypeScript definitions

I wanted it, I couldn't find it so I created it!


It is published on GitHub here under MIT-license. 

Next step will be to publish it on Nuget, NPM and of course definitely typed. But I would like to play with it a bit first.

Hopefully it will be usefull.

söndag 29 juli 2018

Aiding the user with Azure Maps search and type ahead

Azure Maps offers geocoding as part of search. In my experience one thing I rarely see is UI helping the user entering correct addresses. Here is an example from editing contact profile in Azure portal as  per 28/7-2018.

Helping the user entering addresses not just increases quality and user experience it will also give the opportunity to store the actual location for further usage depending on context.

So what does it takes to use Azure Maps in this scenario. Well, not much. depending on how you count rows it is about 40 lines of code for a form. About 8 lines is actually dealing with the Azure Maps geocoding service - the rest is things around.

!NIH
This post is about using a service aiding users entering addresses. Therefore the code is using Awesomplete as type ahead component. In most real world integrations there is probably allready a UI framework in place.


Components through Nuget?
Hopefully there will be several components available. Maybe it already is? Via Nuget? XAML, Bootstrap, Office365?






I know Azure IoT-Hub using this kind of components. A good start.

One parameter to keep in mind is the typeahead parameter in the request URL. The documentation states: "If the typeahead flag is set, the query will be interpreted as a partial input and the search will enter predictive mode".


The code is on here on GitHub.