(For more resources related to this topic, see here.)

Location services

While working with location services on the Android platform, you will primarily work with an instance of LocationManager. The process is fairly straightforward as follows:

1. Obtain a reference to an instance of LocationManager.
2. Use the instance of LocationManager to request location change notifications, either ongoing or a single notification.
3. Process OnLocationChange() callbacks.

Android devices generally provide two different means for determining a location: GPS and Network. When requesting location change notifications, you must specify the provider you wish to receive updates from. The Android platform defines a set of string constants for the following providers:

You will notice specific permissions in the provider descriptions that must be set on an app to be used.

Setting app permissions

App permissions are specified in the AndroidManifest.xml file. To set the appropriate permissions, perform the following steps:

1. Double-click on Properties/AndroidManifest.xml in the Solution pad. The file will be opened in the manifest editor. There are two tabs at the bottom of the screen, Application and Source, which can be used to toggle between viewing a form for editing the file or the raw XML as follows:

   

2. In the Required permissions list, check AccessCoarseLocation, AccessFineLocation, and Internet. Select File | Save.

   

3. Switch to the Source View to view the XML as follows:

   

Configuring the emulator

To use an emulator for development, this article will require the emulator to be configured with Google APIs so that the address lookup and navigation to map app works.

To install and configure Google APIs, perform the following steps:

1. From the main menu, select Tools | Open Android SDK Manager.
2. Select the platform version you are using, check Google APIs, and click on Install 1 package…, as seen in the following screenshot:

   

3. After the installation is complete, close the Android SDK Manager and from the main menu, select Tools | Open Android Emulator Manager.
4. Select the emulator you want to configure and click on Edit.
5. For Target, select the Google APIs entry for the API level you want to work with.

   

6. Click on OK to save.

Obtaining an instance of LocationManager

The LocationManager class is a system service that provides access to the location and bearing of a device, if the device supports these services. You do not explicitly create an instance of LocationManager; instead, you request an instance from a Context object using the GetSystemService() method. In most cases, the Context object is a subtype of Activity. The following code depicts declaring a reference of a LocationManager class and requesting an instance:

LocationManager _locMgr;
. . .
_locMgr = GetSystemService (Context.LocationService) as LocationManager;

Requesting location change notifications

The LocationManager class provides a series of overloaded methods that can be used to request location update notifications. If you simply need a single update, you can call RequestSingleUpdate(); to receive ongoing updates, call RequestLocationUpdate().

Prior to requesting location updates, you must identify the location provider that should be used. In our case, we simply want to use the most accurate provider available at the time. This can be accomplished by specifying the criteria for the desired provider using an instance of Android.Location.Criteria. The following code example shows how to specify the minimum criteria:

Criteria criteria = new Criteria();
criteria.Accuracy = Accuracy.NoRequirement;
criteria.PowerRequirement = Power.NoRequirement;

Now that we have the criteria, we are ready to request updates as follows:

_locMgr.RequestSingleUpdate (criteria, this, null);

Summary

In this article, we stepped through integrating POIApp with location services and the Google map app. We dealt with the various options that developers have to make their apps location aware and walks the reader through adding logic to determine a device’s location and the address of a location, and displaying a location within the map app.

Resources for Article:

Further resources on this subject:

• Creating and configuring a basic mobile application [Article]
• Creating Dynamic UI with Android Fragments [Article]
• So, what is Spring for Android? [Article]