This time John Vanderaart is bows over APIs. No, those are not the animals that you see in zoos and that sometimes look surprisingly like people. No, John’s API is one Application Programming Interfacea series of rules and standards that ensure that software applications can communicate with each other and exchange data.

At the moment I am working on a new implementation of Google Maps on a website that could be stuffed. That website runs-for a while-on an old PHP server that has not been overlooked for years. And then also a decent dashboard to adjust the locations!

I once looked at that PHP code well and I have to say: “A miracle that it still works!” That miracle is, incidentally, thanks to Google, who still supports the elderly APIs; For which a plume. In the meantime, there is a new API with new objects and new possibilities. All of this is extensively documented, I even dare to say: “Too extensive!” Anyway, get started!

Pretty soon I had a few things in the air. The first demonstration tasted like more, because suddenly the colleagues all had extra wishes that they would like to see implemented. One of those wishes: “Let the wideability of the markers depend on the Zoom factor.” A so -called event-handler He responds to zoom movements was quickly made. I let go of Google AI Studio (from Google itself, so 100% informed) talk about hiding and showing the markers. Only: “Google ai studio was completely wrong!”

Google AI Studio came up with a general solution that works great in 99 out of 100 cases. Remains in 1 case: “My case!” But luckily there is always Stackoverflow that managed to put me on the right track.

The solution (putting the ‘map’ under the ‘marker’ on ‘null’) turned out to be far -fetched, but to function well and fast. In retrospect it gave me insight into the way Google put the (let’s say) Maps extras put together: “Apart from each other.” And that thought suddenly makes next steps a lot more fun, but apparently a bit more complicated for AI. Anyway, just an example that AI is not a holy grail for a long time. Yes, programming remains for a while.

Column 150193 Figure 1

Get started with the new API from Google Maps. Possial options! But you have to know how …