How to Customize information displayed in Android Maps using Polaris Library

Question

I'm using Polaris Library for Android Maps because it has Clustering support: Polaris with Clustering. I'm not relying on Google maps V2 cause it would leave out of my target many devices.

What I need to do, is to be able to personalize the information displayed in a balloon. When a user taps a marker, a balloon should be shown with a picture in the left, 4 lines of text in the middle and another drawable to the right.

I've exchanged a couple of mails with Polaris creator who is unable to give full support to every developer using his library for obvious reasons. He hinted me at using MapCalloutView#setCustomView but I can't figure it out.

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

I've finally made it work.

First of all I've extended Annotation to add additional fields:

public class CustomAnnotation extends Annotation {
private CustomObject cObject;

public CustomObject getCustomObject() {
    return cObject;
}

public void setCustomObject(CustomObject cObject) {
    this.cObject = cObject;
}

public CustomAnnotation(GeoPoint point, String title, String snippet,CustomObject cObject) {
    super(point, title, snippet);
    this.cObject = cObject;
}

I created a layout for the CallOutView:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:id="@+id/content"
android:paddingLeft="5dip"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:orientation="vertical">
<LinearLayout
      android:id="@+id/balloon_inner_layout"
  android:layout_width="wrap_content"
  android:layout_height="wrap_content"
  android:orientation="horizontal"
  android:layout_gravity="center_vertical">
  <ImageView
      android:id="@+id/image"
      android:layout_width="50dip"
      android:layout_height="50dip"
      android:contentDescription="@string/descr_image"
      android:src="@drawable/stub"
      android:scaleType="centerCrop"
      android:layout_gravity="center_vertical"/>
  <LinearLayout
          android:paddingLeft="5dip"
      android:layout_width="wrap_content"
      android:layout_height="wrap_content"
      android:orientation="vertical">
      <TextView
        android:id="@+id/price"
    android:textStyle="bold"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    />
      <TextView
    android:id="@+id/address"
    android:textStyle="bold"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    />
    <TextView
      android:id="@+id/sup"
      android:layout_width="wrap_content"
      android:layout_height="wrap_content"            
      android:visibility="gone"/>
    <TextView
               android:layout_height="wrap_content"
               android:layout_width="wrap_content"
               android:id="@+id/rooms"
               android:visibility="gone"/>      
          </LinearLayout>
   </LinearLayout>

In my MapActivity class I've implemented OnAnnotationSelectionChangedListener. Dont forget to set the listener.

In MapActivity#onAnnotationSelected I cast the annotation received to my CustomAnnotation so I can use the additional Fields, Inflate a layout into a View Object and setText to all my TextViews:

@Override
public void onAnnotationSelected(PolarisMapView mapView,
        MapCalloutView calloutView, int position, Annotation annotation) {
    CustomAnnotation ca = (CustomAnnotation) annotations.get(position);
    View view = (View)getLayoutInflater().inflate(R.layout.balloon_test, null);
            CustomObject object = ca.getCustomObject();
        TextView txView = (TextView)view.findViewById(R.id.field1);
        txView.setText(object.getField1());
        txView.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
    ...
            //set aditional data in your callout
            ...
                    calloutView.setDisclosureEnabled(true);
        calloutView.setClickable(true);
        calloutView.setCustomView(view);
        calloutView.show(mPolarisMapView, annotation.getPoint(), false);
        }

That's all. Hope it helps somebody.