The Bing Maps Locations REST API is for geocoding – i.e. finding addresses or places on a map. However, I’ve seen a couple of questions over the last week from people trying to search not for known addresses, but for things – pubs, restaurants, schools, hospitals, and the like. You used to be able to do this kind of search in v6.x of the Bing Maps control using the Find() method, which would search for and then add any matching entities to the map, but this doesn’t exist in the slimmed down v7 control.
Instead, one alternative is to use the Bing API (not the Bing Maps API) to perform a search for the results, and then plot the results on the map. The Bing API exposes a number of REST search services, but the Phonebook search is the one you’re most likely to want to use. To perform a Bing search, you’ll first need a Bing AppId (again, different from your Bing Maps Application Key), which you can sign up for here:
http://www.bing.com/developers
You can find a basic sample of the Bing Phonebook search at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd251030.aspx
, which simply outputs the search results into a list. To plot the results on Bing Maps instead, the process is to make a REST request to the Bing phonebook search service and, in the callback function specified, loop through the results and create pushpins at the relevant Latitude and Longitude coordinates and push them on to the map.
For example, in the code below, I search for any pubs that lie within the bounding box of the current map view (refreshes every time the map view changes by listening to the viewchangeend event), and create a pushpin at each location that, when clicked, displays an Infobox containing the address and phonenumber of the entity.
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>Bing Phonebook Search</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ecn.dev.virtualearth.net/mapcontrol/mapcontrol.ashx?v=7.0"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
var map = null;
function GetMap() {
// Create a default map
map = new Microsoft.Maps.Map(
document.getElementById("mapDiv"),
{
credentials: "ENTERYOURBINGMAPSKEY",
center: new Microsoft.Maps.Location(52.63, 1.3),
zoom: 17,
enableSearchLogo: false
}
);
var viewChangeEndHandler = Microsoft.Maps.Events.addHandler(map, 'viewchangeend', ViewChangeEndHandler);
}
function ViewChangeEndHandler(e) {
var mapCenter = map.getCenter();
var request = "http://api.bing.net/json.aspx?"
// Common request fields (required)
+ "AppId=" + "ENTERYOURBINGAPPID"
+ "&Query=Pubs"
+ "&Sources=Phonebook"
// Common request fields (optional)
+ "&Version=2.0"
+ "&Market=en-us"
+ "&UILanguage=en"
+ "&Latitude=" + mapCenter.latitude
+ "&Longitude=" + mapCenter.longitude
+ "&Radius=100.0"
+ "&Options=EnableHighlighting"
// Phonebook-specific request fields (optional)
+ "&Phonebook.Count=25"
+ "&Phonebook.Offset=0"
+ "&Phonebook.FileType=YP"
+ "&Phonebook.SortBy=Distance"
// JSON-specific request fields (optional)
+ "&JsonType=callback"
+ "&JsonCallback=BingPhonebookCallback";
// Create a new script element
var script = document.createElement("script");
script.setAttribute("type", "text/javascript");
script.setAttribute("src", request);
// Append the script to the document head
var dochead = document.getElementsByTagName("head").item(0);
dochead.appendChild(script);
}
function BingPhonebookCallback(response) {
// If we got a valid, non-null result set
if (response && response.SearchResponse && response.SearchResponse.Phonebook && response.SearchResponse.Phonebook.Results && response.SearchResponse.Phonebook.Results.length > 0) {
map.entities.clear();
var results = response.SearchResponse.Phonebook.Results;
for (var i = 0; i < results.length; i++) {
var location = new Microsoft.Maps.Location(
parseFloat(results[i].Latitude),
parseFloat(results[i].Longitude)
);
var pushpin = new Microsoft.Maps.Pushpin(location);
pushpin.Title = results[i].Title;
pushpin.Address = results[i].Address;
pushpin.PhoneNumber = results[i].PhoneNumber;
pushpin.DisplayUrl = results[i].DisplayUrl;
Microsoft.Maps.Events.addHandler(pushpin, 'click', function(e) {
var infoboxOptions = {
width: 200,
height: 100,
showCloseButton: true,
zIndex: 0,
offset: new Microsoft.Maps.Point(0, 0),
showPointer: true,
title: e.target.Title,
description: e.target.Address + " " + e.target.PhoneNumber
};
var defaultInfobox = new Microsoft.Maps.Infobox(e.target.getLocation(), infoboxOptions);
map.entities.push(defaultInfobox);
});
map.entities.push(pushpin);
}
}
}
</script>
</head>
<body onload="GetMap();">
<div id='mapDiv' style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width:800px; height:600px;">
</div>
</body>
</html>
And here's the results, with an Infobox callout showing location details of the best pub quiz in Norwich (held every tuesday night – our regular team name is “Quizteama Aguilera”, BTW):
