Google Maps API Licensing - FAQ

Google Maps API for Business License

To create beautiful maps and embed them in your sites, apps and internal platforms. Deliver location-relevant information to your users-anytime, anywhere & let location open  new possibilities for your business. 

It helps to make better decisions, optimize people and assets, engage your users and building amazing web apps or mobile apps easily.

1. How to create an API console key to work with Places API?

• Visit the APIs Console at https://code.google.com/apis/console and log in with your Google Account.

• Click the Services link from the left-hand menu.

• Activate the Places API service.

• Click the API Access link from the left-hand menu. Your API key is available from the API Access page, in the Simple API Access section.

Google Maps API

Example Url : https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/search/xml?location=19.092618,72.880554&radius=5000&types=atm&name=sbi&sensor=false&key=yourkey

2. How to use Client ID with the existing APIs?

The following bootstrap request illustrates how to request the google.maps.places library of the Maps Javascript API:

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?libraries=places&sensor=true_or_false"> </script>

To request multiple libraries, separate them with a comma:

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?libraries=geometry,places&sensor=true_or_false"></script>

Using Client ID

 <script src="https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?v=3&client=yourclientid&sensor=false&libraries=places", type="text/javascript"></script>

3. How Generate valid signature using crypto key?

Client Side URL testing purpose only: 

https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?v=3&client=yourclientid&signature=yourcryptokey&sensor=false&libraries=places

Server Side: URLs should always be signed server-side to avoid exposing your crypto key to users.

Signing a URL in C#

The example below uses the default System.Security.Cryptography library to sign a URL request and output a proper URL request. Note that we need to convert the default Base64 encoding to implement an URL-safe version.

Reference Code

http://gmaps-samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/urlsigning/UrlSigner.cs

Google Web Service Reference

https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/business/webservices#digital_signatures

Conclusion : It was fun in learning and writing an article on Google Maps API Licensing - FAQ. I hope this article will be helpful for enthusiastic peoples who are eager to learn and implement some interesting stuffs in new technology.

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