Finding your way with MapPoint

This year at TechEd, Microsoft launched MapPoint Web services with data for Australia. This brings the total number of countries supported to 25. Being a self-confessed map nerd I was involved in this launch, presenting some demos of MapPoint technology. For me maps work best on mobile devices, such as Pocket PC's and they work really well on the Tablet PC. That is of course what I was demonstrating.

Sign Up
In order to get started using the MapPoint Web Service you will need developer credentials. These credentials let you log onto the web service and make method calls to retrieve the maps and map data. The king of MapPoint blogs Chandu Thota has a great 5 step plan to help you get your MapPoint credentials.

Chandu's Easy Steps to MapPoint developer credentials

1. If you have MSDN Universal subscription, follow these steps to get free access to the MapPoint Web Service for a year!
   1. Go to http://www.microsoft.com/mappoint/msdn/msdnspec.aspx.
   2. Login to the MSDN subscriber's page and fill in the information and submit the form.
2. If you don't MSDN Universal subscription, don't worry! You still can get access to the MapPoint Web Service for free for 45 days. Follow the steps below:
   1. Go to https://s.microsoft.com/mappoint/enterprise/webservice/seval.aspx.
   2. Fill in the information and submit the form.
3. Then you will receive an email with an account id and password to access the MapPoint Web Service.
4. Along with the MapPoint Web Service information you will also receive credentials to access MapPoint extranet site. You can think of the MapPoint extranet as a dashboard to manage your MapPoint Web Service settings and environment. For example, if you want to change your password or if you want to upload your own points of interest, or create your own icons you have to use the extranet.
5. Finally, if you are in the process of developing your MapPoint Web Service Solution, you can request the extension of your account by sending an email to mailto:mpnet@microsoft.com.

Getting Going
Once you have your credentials you can get started with developing a client application that can consume the Web service and display maps. I have put together a hands-on-exercise that you can follow to get a simple Windows Form client that will display a map of a location and a route. This exercise assumes you have Visual Studio.NET, however because MapPoint is a Web service you don't need to develop a solution with .NET at all.

1. Create a new C# Windows Application project called MapPointDownUnder, figure 1.

   
   Figure 1: Create a new project

2. In solution explorer right click on the references folder and select 'Add Web Reference..' from the popup menu. In the Add Web Reference dialog that pops up point the URL to the MapPoint staging server, http://staging.mappoint.net/standard-30/mappoint.wsdl.
   This is the Web service you should develop against. When your application is ready to go live you can move the reference to the Web service to the production server.
   We'll leave the other details as they appear by default, figure 2.

   
   Figure 2: Add Web Reference

3. Now lets add a user interface to our Windows Form. We will add a Label, TextBox, PictureBox and Button as shown in figure 3.
   Name the TextBox, PictureBox and Button; postcode, mapBox and showMapButton, respectively.

   
   Figure 3: Add controls to the form

4. At the top of the Form1.cs file add 2 using clauses to reference the System.NET and Web Service namespaces.

   using System.Net;
   using MapPointDownUnder.net.mappoint.staging;

5. Double click on the showMapButton in the design view to generate the button click event handler. We can now put code in here to get the map and draw it in our mapBox control.

   private void showMapButton_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e) { string userID = @"<username>"; string password = @"<password>"; NetworkCredential creds = new NetworkCredential(userID, password); FindAddressSpecification findAddrSpec = new FindAddressSpecification(); findAddrSpec.InputAddress = new Address(); findAddrSpec.InputAddress.PostalCode = postcode.Text; findAddrSpec.InputAddress.CountryRegion = "Australia"; findAddrSpec.DataSourceName = "MapPoint.AP"; FindServiceSoap findService = new FindServiceSoap(); findService.Credentials = creds; findService.PreAuthenticate = true; FindResults foundAddrResults; foundAddrResults = findService.FindAddress(findAddrSpec); if (foundAddrResults.NumberFound < 1) { MessageBox.Show("Sorry no map found"); return; } MapSpecification mapSpec = new MapSpecification(); mapSpec.DataSourceName = "MapPoint.AP"; ViewByScale[] views = new ViewByScale[1]; views [0] = new ViewByScale(); mapSpec.Views = views; views[0].CenterPoint = foundAddrResults.Results[0].FoundLocation.LatLong; mapSpec.Options = new MapOptions(); mapSpec.Options.Format = new ImageFormat(); mapSpec.Options.Format.Height = mapBox.Height; mapSpec.Options.Format.Width = mapBox.Width; mapSpec.Options.Zoom = 10; MapImage[] mapImages; RenderServiceSoap rs = new RenderServiceSoap(); rs.Credentials = creds; rs.PreAuthenticate = true; mapImages = rs.GetMap (mapSpec); mapBox.Image = new Bitmap (new System.IO.MemoryStream (mapImages[0].MimeData.Bits)); }