Map Links

The maps URL scheme is used to show geographical locations and to generate driving directions between two points. If your application includes address or location information, you can use map links to forward that information to the Maps application on iOS and the Google Maps website on other platforms.

Unlike some schemes, map URLs do not start with a ‚Äúmaps‚Äù scheme identifier. Instead, map links are specified as regular http links but are targeted at the Google Maps servers. The following examples show the strings you would use in Safari and in a native application to show a map of the city of Cupertino, California.

• HTML link:

  <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=cupertino">Cupertino</a>

• Native application URL string:

  http://maps.google.com/maps?q=cupertino

The following examples show the strings you would use to provide driving directions between San Francisco and Cupertino:

• HTML link:

  <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?daddr=San+Francisco,+CA&saddr=cupertino">Directions</a>

• Native application string:

  http://maps.google.com/maps?daddr=San+Francisco,+CA&saddr=cupertino

Although the Maps application supports many of the Google Maps parameters and queries, it does not support them all. The rules for creating a valid map link are as follows:

• The domain must be google.com and the subdomain must be maps or ditu.

• The path must be /, /maps, /local, or /m if the query contains site as the key and local as the value.

• The path cannot be /maps/*.

• All parameters must be supported. See Table 1 for list of supported parameters.

• A parameter cannot be q=* if the value is a URL (so KML is not picked up).

• The parameters cannot include view=text or dirflg=r.

Table 1 lists the parameters supported by iOS along with a brief description of each. For a complete description of these parameters, see Google Map Parameters.

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