Android: Why does a new instance of Location require a provider?

Question

I have a lot of geo data stored online with latitude and longitude and I'd like to use the distanceTo method instead of my own haversine formula.

So I need to put each record into a Location field, but here's my question: it requires a "provider" string. Why? What will Android do with that information?

    for (ArrayList<String> item : Places_Data) {
        Location itemloc = new Location("provider");
        itemloc.setLatitude(latIn);
        itemloc.setLongitude(lonIn);
        //do something with my new location
    }

Answer 1

From the source code for Location, it doesn't use the string to do anything meaningful. It just uses it to describe the Location internally. If you do Location#toString(), it prints out the co-ordinates, the provider and other details (accuracy, etc). That's all it's used for, internal description.

You can make the provider anything, as seen in this answer: Creating Android Location Object

Answer 2

Use correctly the way

package android.location.LocationManager
Location location = new Location(LocationManager.GPS_PROVIDER);

Use NETWORK_PROVIDER o GPS_PROVIDER

https://developer.android.com/reference/android/location/LocationManager.html#GPS_PROVIDER

https://developer.android.com/reference/android/location/LocationManager.html#NETWORK_PROVIDER