Everybody uses Google Map, or at least the people I know. It's handy, ubiquitous and accurate (most of the time). In order to integrate Google Map to your site, you need to have a good knowledge of the Maps JavaScript API. Now, with the invention of Web Components, this is all you need for a nice window of Google Map:
<google-map api-key="AIzaSyD3E1D9b-Z7ekrT3tbhl_dy8DCXuIuDDRc"></google-map>
The result:
Too good to be true? That's Web Components for ya π Let's look at some more examples on how to utilize this powerful web component.
Displaying the marker and the poly in Google Map
The google-map
web component also provides some other useful sub-elements to use with:
-
google-map-directions
: provides the Directions API service. -
google-map-marker
: provides a map marker. It is used as a child of google-map. -
google-map-point
: provides a map point. It can be used as a child of all google-map-*. -
google-map-poly
: displays a series of connected lines segments. It is used inside google-map and needs at least two google-map-point. -
google-map-search
: provides the Places API functionalities.
For example, here's how you would use a marker (click HTML to show the code):
As you can see from the code, a longitude and a latitude value are needed for the marker. You may include as many markers in a single map as possible, the attribute fit-to-markers
makes sure that all of them are in the view. Well, it does not function in my demo.
What is the difference between a google-map-point
and a google-map-marker
? A marker can be displayed directly inside google-map
and draggable, while a point is fixed and can be only used as children of google-map-*
, such as google-map-poly
:
I couldn't succeed in making google-map-directions
and google-map-search
work, the same things happened several months ago when I first tried these. Feel free to check out and fork the pen here:
-
google-map-directions
: https://codepen.io/vaadin/pen/NBPbVQ -
google-map-search
: https://codepen.io/vaadin/pen/mjyRXZ
And if you got it working, please leave a comment below to teach me :)
Final words
With the invention of Web Components, things might have gone two steps easier for developers to integrate technology like Google Map in a website. And the best thing about Web Components is that in a few years, all of its standards will be available in every browser natively.
- For more news and writing pieces on Web Components, follow me on Twitter @binhbbbb
- If you would like to try out Web Components, check out the series Web Components Wednesday, where I introduce and explain easy-to-use web components to beginners.
Top comments (2)
All your examples are broken because the Google Maps API now requires an API key:
developers.google.com/maps/documen...
unfortunately this page and all the examples a broken