CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iosobjective-ciphonemapkit
Audrey Hipburn
Audrey Hipburn

Reputation: 83

iOS support 3rd party navigation

In iOS 8 (maybe 7 too I can't recall) you can set default applications for navigation. I am currently implementing a button that allows a user to open up Apple Maps and get directions to a location the following way:

- (IBAction)getDirections:(id)sender {

CLLocationCoordinate2D endingCoord = storeLocation;
MKPlacemark *endLocation = [[MKPlacemark alloc] initWithCoordinate:endingCoord addressDictionary:nil];
MKMapItem *endingItem = [[MKMapItem alloc] initWithPlacemark:endLocation];
endingItem.name = @"Cubes Pizza Sunway";

NSMutableDictionary *launchOptions = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init];
[launchOptions setObject:MKLaunchOptionsDirectionsModeDriving forKey:MKLaunchOptionsDirectionsModeKey];

[endingItem openInMapsWithLaunchOptions:launchOptions];

}

This works great and launches how I'd expect. However, what if the user has Google Maps installed? Will Apple automatically give the user an option? Or do I need to implement an activity sheet and detect all the navigation apps and then figure out the URL schemas for each one?)

How would I go about implementing such a thing?

This is the same question: iOS - run 3rd party navigation app from code but it's a year old and wanted to know if this feature was implemented by APPLE and if not how to implement checking if app is installed etc.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 130

Answers (1)

Joseph Duffy
Joseph Duffy

Reputation: 4826

Google Maps has a URL scheme that you can use to launch the app. Here is how you request directions. As described on their page you can check if the Google Maps app is installed via:

UIApplication.sharedApplication().canOpenURL(NSURL(string: "comgooglemaps://")!)

You'll also need to add comgooglemaps to the LSApplicationQueriesSchemes dictionary in your Info.plist to be able to use the canOpenURL: method on iOS 9, as described in this blog post.

I believe the "default navigation app" you're thinking of is actually a way for the user to manually switch other apps once they're in the built-in Maps app.

Upvotes: 1

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