OverlayView in iPhone - iphone

What is the meaning of term OverlayView in iPhone can any one give me detailed description

From Apple documentation:
The MKOverlay protocol defines a specific type of annotation that represents both a point and an area on a map. Overlay objects are essentially data objects that contain the geographic data needed to represent the map area. For example, overlays can take the form of common shapes such as rectangles and circles. They can also describe polygons and other complex shapes.
You use overlays to layer more sophisticated content on top of a map view. For example, you could use an overlay to show the boundaries of a national park or trace a bus route along city streets. The Map Kit framework defines several concrete classes that conform to this protocol and define standard shapes.
Because overlays are also annotations, they have similar usage pattern to annotations. When added to a map view using the addOverlay: method, that view detects whenever the overlay’s defined region intersects the visible portion of the map. At that point, the map view asks its delegate to provide a special overlay view to draw the visual representation of the overlay. If you add an overlay to a map view as an annotation instead, it is treated as an annotation with a single point.
For more info see documenation of MKOverlay and MKOverlayView

Overlay provides you a layer on top of the map so that you can draw something on it(Mostly polygons, lines, points).
To know more see MKOverlay MKOverlayView Apple's Documentation
This tutorial can help you
FYI: MKOverlay will work on iOS4 and after

Related

How to draw line between two views in Swift

I want to Draw lines from one object to another object. Like a Matching object game. I want Swift language with UIKit Use. Here I attach the Sample Screenshot.
Does anyone have experience with this? then please help me.
You have a couple of choices.
You can create a custom subclass of UIView that implements the draw(_:) function to draw custom content. That view would need to big enough to enclose all of your custom drawing. You'd fill most of the view with clear, and then draw the lines you want using Core Graphics.
The other option is to use Core Animation layers. You could add a CAShapeLayer to your view's layer, set up the shape layer with the desired line thickness and color, and add a path to the layer containing the lines you want to draw. (Note that if you use CAShapeLayers, all the lines drawn in a single shape layer will be the same color. You'll need multiple shape layers in order to draw in multiple colors.)
Both approaches will require some research. Shape layers are more efficient and take better advantage of the graphics hardware on iOS devices, but using them has a fairly steep learning curve.
You should be able to google examples of both approaches. Try search phrases like "Custom drawing in a UIView" and "drawing with CAShapeLayer". I wrote a little demo app called OvalView that demonstrates how to create a UIView subclass that manages a shape layer.
Edit:
I adapted the code from my sample app into a demo called LinesBetweenViews. The new demo has a custom UIView that draws lines between any pairs of subviews you put into it.
Here is a screenshot of the demo:
If you answer my questions I can upload the demo app to Github so you can look at it.
Edit #2
See this Github repo for a sample project that draws lines between pairs of subviews.

How can I tell if a Leaflet layer is currently visible?

I'm building a Leaflet plugin that adds/removes layers to/from a Leaflet map. My plugin needs to know if a given layer is visible on-screen. So far, I've come up with the following criteria that a layer must meet in order to be considered "visible":
It must be added to the map. (This is trivial to check in my case.)
It must be within a valid zoom range. (This is also pretty easy to handle.)
It must be visible within the current extent/bounds.
The third criteria is the one I am having difficulty checking. My layers are a variety of different Esri-Leaflet layers. I understand that I can check whether a given point or rectangle is contained within the visible bounds of the map with map.getBounds().contains(...), but my problem is I am not sure how to represent my Esri-Leaflet layer as a rectangle. Not even all Leaflet layers have a getLatLng() method, so this question isn't even Esri-Leaflet specific (e.g. how would you perform the same check on a TileLayer)?
How can I get the bounds of a Leaflet layer, or otherwise check if the layer is visible on the map?
Not a duplicate of:
Get a list of markers/layers within current map bounds in Leaflet
Get the bounding box of the visible leaflet map?

How to add overlays designed by user on button click in a map

I am interested in adding an option to my GIS Map application, the ability to draw Polygon, circle, polyroutes overlays for the user to search data within.The problem is that I've read and tested codes of how to draw an overlay, but they are always static.I want it to be dynamic, with dynamic center and points (or radius) set by the user on click.A mystery for me.(I'm a beginner in iPhone programming, this is my first app.)And I'm not using and don't want to use things like ArcGIS API for iPhone.I would appreciate any help.
To let the user "draw" an arbitrary polygon on the map, one approach is to use draggable annotations that represent the corners of the polygon. Provide an "Add Corner" button and some kind of Remove Corner button on each annotation.
See my answer to User creating a box on MKMapView for some more details. On that question though, the OP actually ended up using another solution described in the comments which would work well if the polygons are always rectangles.
For implementing a button in an annotation view (if you want a "Remove Corner" button on the annotations), see my answer to How to get click event from a button added over MKAnnotationView.
Once you a have a polygon or other overlay on the map, dragging it by direct touches may only be possible by adding a gesture recognizer to the map (with its own scrolling turned off) and using a custom MKOverlay and MKOverlayView that allow coordinate changes. Adding a gesture recognizer directly to an MKOverlayView doesn't seem to work and the built-in overlay classes don't allow changes to coordinates.
An alternative to moving by direct touches is putting some controls on the side (Up/Down/Left/Right/etc buttons) that modify the custom overlay.
The Apple sample app Breadcrumb gives an example of a custom overlay/view for a path. In WWDC 2010, the sample app LocationReminders gives an example of a custom overlay/view for a circle that can move and resize.
Finally, when you do a search for businesses, you could use the overlay's boundingMapRect (which is always a rectangle regardless of the overlay's shape) as the bounding box for the initial search and then check if the coordinate of each business found is in the overlay's actual shape using the answer to How to determine if an annotation is inside of MKPolygonView (iOS).

What is the difference between MKOverlay and MKAnnotation?

I am new to MKMapView. I implemented a mapView which is looking good. But i was planning to add points or custom image as point in MapView. I can implement it with the help of MKAnnotation, but when i read MKOverlay it was mentioned that Overlays are also annotations. So whats the difference between these two??
Thanks in advance,
aby
In a nutshell, MKAnnotation is based on a point (x,y). MKOverlay is based on an area, bounded by a rectangle.
An MKAnnotation is simply a point on the map, often represented with a red pin icon (you'll see these if you search for a location in Apple's Maps app on iOS), whereas an MKOverlay is another layer over the map to display extra information. A good example of this could be the traffic overlay displayed on the map in US regions to indicate the current level of traffic.
You'd want to use an MKAnnotation in situations where you need to show the user a specific point on a map, but if you want to display more information to them over a larger area, go with an MKOverlay.
Apple uses an MKOverlay to display shipping routes for boats in their WWDC video on the topic (Session 127 – Customizing Maps with Overlays). That would be a good place to learn the full difference between the two, and how to use overlays correctly.

MKMapView tile-based overlay

I want to draw a tile-based overlay on top of a MKMapView, but there's no obvious way to do this.
This appears to be tricky since you can zoom to any level with MKMapView (unlike Google Maps).
Has anyone attempted to do this?
Incase this question is still getting views readers should check out the HazardMap and TileMap demo code from WWDC2010.
I'm working on a game where I need to overlay objects on the map and have them scroll and zoom with the map.
Using annotation views I've been able to solve the first problem and partially solve the second problem. Annotations automatically move with the map. For scaling them, I use the mapView:regionDidChangeAnimated: delegate method to resize my annotations after a zoom event. The problem is that the annotations don't rescale until after the zoom gesture is complete.
I can think of two approaches other than filing a bug with Apple requesting that they provide an API for map overlays:
Put a (mostly invisible) view over the top of the MKMapView that intercepts zoom and scroll events, handles them, and passes them on to the map view.
Customize the open-source RouteMe library with tiles from Open Street Map or CloudMade (the former is slow, the latter costs money). But it's fully open source so you should be able to do overlays to your heart's content. You could also run your own tile server that does the tile overlays on the server.
Something I discovered later:
http://www.gisnotes.com/wordpress/2009/10/iphone-devnote-14-drawing-a-point-line-polygon-on-top-of-mkmapview/
Not quite a tile-based solution, but interesting nonetheless.