Adding Azure Maps to an Android Application

 

This is a continuation of a series of articles on operational engineering aspects of Azure public cloud computing. In this article, we continue the discussion on Azure Maps which is a full-fledged general availability service that provides similar Service Level Agreements as expected from others in the category but with an emphasis on writing mobile applications. Specifically, we target the Android platform.

We leverage an Event-Driven architecture style where the Service Bus delivers the messages that the mobile application processes. As with the case of GeoFencing, different messages can be used for different handling. The mobile application is a consumer for the message making occassional API calls that generates messages on the backend of a web-queue server. The scope of this document is to focus on just the mobile application stack. The tracking and producing of messages are done in the backend and the mobile application uses the Bing Maps to display the location.  We will need an active Azure Maps account and key for this purpose. The subscription, resource group, name and pricing tier must be determined beforehand. The mobile application merely adds an Azure Maps control to the application.

An Android application will require Java based deployment. Since the communication is over HTTP, the technology stack can be independent between the backend and the mobile application. The Azure Maps Android SDK will be leveraged for this purpose. The top-level build.gradle file will define the URL https://atlas.microsoft.com/sdk/android. Java 8 can be chosen as the appropriate version to use. The SDK can be imported into the build.gradle  with the artifact description as "com.azure.android:azure-maps-control:1.0.0". The application will introduce the map control as <com.azure.android.maps.control.MapControl android:id="@+id/mapcontrol" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="match_parent" /> in the main activity xml file. The corresponding Java file will add imports for the Azure Map SDK, set the Azure Maps Authentication information and get the map control instance in the onCreate method. SetSubscriptionKey and SetAadProperties can be used to add the authentication information on every view. The control will display the map even on the emulator. Sample Android application can be seen here.

As with all application, the activity control loops must be tightened and guide the user through specific workflows. The views, their lifetime and activity must be controlled, and the user should not see the application as hung or spinning. The interactivity for the control is assured if the application is recycling and cleaning up the associated resources as the user moves in and out of a page to another page.

It is highly recommended to get the activity framework and navigations worked out and planned independent of the content. The views corresponding to the content are going to be restricted to the one that displays the control, so the application focuses mostly on the user navigations and activities.