URL Scheme (Launching and Controlling PE from other Apps)

[OG2404]

Hello,

I use Launch Center Pro to start other Apps with parameters. It’s a Launcher that can, for example, open Chrome to search for the text you just copied in another App. It’s quite powerful and rely on URL schemes to do that.

Can you please add support for URL scheme in Pocket Earth? The minimum is to be able to start the App. Here are some info about implementing URL schemes.

It could be very useful to directly open Pocket Earth to any location (coordinates, favorites…) to create Bookmarks you can access very quickly.

You could also search for certain categories of POI near you (or at any location), right from your dock!

Example: show me the museums in Paris, or the restaurants at less than 2km from here, etc…

All this already exist in Pocket Earth, but adding URL scheme would greatly improve ease of use and interactions with other Apps.

Thank you,

Olivier

[GeoMagik]

Thanks for the feedback! PocketEarth does support some basic URL scheme functionality already, and we will be happy to consider additions to it for a future version! Current functions include:

• Launch PocketEarth:  magikmap://

• Launch to specific location:  magikmap://?lat=XX&lon=YY   (where XX and YY are replaced with actual coordinates in Decimal Degree units, eg: Paris would be: magikmap://?lat=48.85&lon=2.348

• Create a Pin at a specific location: magikmap://?lat=XX&lon=YY&name=NN&desc=DD  (where XX and YY are same as above, and NN is name of pin and DD is text to go in the Notes field.

[OG2404]

Thank you! This is great news!

Bug:

– “magikmap://” does work, but the world is zoomed out completely. It should work as a normal starting: resume last view (location, zoom).

First suggestions:

– “?geolocate” would open on current GPS localisation without changing GPS settings (ie: a quick “locate me” on opening)

– Optional zoom parameter: “&zoom=” with a number going from 1 (completely zoomed out) to 100 (completely zoomed in).

– Open map with favorite: “?destination=”, “?listing=”, “?pin=”, “?route=” with name of the favorite

– “&category=XX&radius=YY&sort=[name, distance or type]” to search POI with those parameters

If I take my previous examples:

– “Museum in Paris”: magikmap://?destination=paris&category=museum (it would keep default radius and sorting)

– “Restaurants <2km”: magikmap://?geolocate&category=restaurants&radius=2&sort=distance

This would be awesome! Other ideas welcome.

Olivier

[GeoMagik]

Ahh thanks for the bug report. That was the reason we hadn’t published this info yet – it wasn’t tested well enough 😉  Our next update will have a revised URL scheme and will work better.

I forgot to say that you can specify the zoom already via zoom=ZZ as you suggested. However the valid range is 1 to 19 which is the natural range that our app supports (these zoom levels have same meaning as they do in online map links). 

Thanks for the other specific examples, we will consider them for inclusion.

[GeoMagik]

Pocket Earth 2.0.2 supports a few additional items:

• Turn on GPS just long enough to get your location fix:

pe-remote://?geolocate

• Turn on GPS and leave it on:

pe-remote://?gps

• Open a specific main screen:

pe-remote://?screen=SCREEN

where SCREEN may be any of the following:  maps.all, maps.favs, favs.all, favs.pins, favs.pois, favs.routes, favs.tracks, favs.groups, search.recents, search.nearby, search.contacts, search.address, search.coords, guides.all, guides.recents, guides.favs

Note that you can optionally combine the screen opening function with either the gps function or the long/lat map positioning function so that Sort by Distance and Nearby Search area covers the location you want.

Also note that pe-remote:// is the new preferred scheme although magikmap:// still works just the same.

[XOMTOR]

@GeoMagik

Nice update, I use this feature all the time when Geocaching. I have the app open pins in Pocket Earth for offline navigating so it’s indispensable. BTW, is it possible to specify the pin attributes such as size, style or color in the URL parameters?

[GeoMagik]

@XOMTOR:

Yes, it is actually. Another undocumented feature 😉  With the create Pin command, you can add the following (they follow same rules as for CSV Import fields for icon and color):

&icon=ICON where ICON *must* be one of these values: marker-pin (default), marker-pin-small, marker-pin-flag, marker-pin-home, marker-pin-contact, marker-pin-camera, marker-pin-sleep, marker-pin-food,  marker-pin-footprint, marker-pin-star.

&color=COLOR where COLOR may be any standard CSS color name or 6 letter hex color code. Examples:  blue, black, F0F8FF. Note, by doing this, you may use any color you like, you are not restricted to the 10 colors offered in the app Pin Info screen.

[XOMTOR]

Very nice, managed to get this working. Thanks.

[mfloreen]

It’s great to see that you’re working on this! I’ve really enjoyed using URL schemes to simplify tasks I do repeatedly. I’ve been playing with this a bit in Pocket Earth with Drafts and Launch Center Pro. Here are some actions I’ve enjoyed using already:

1. Send “I am here” pin by SMS. Invaluable when exploring a place with cell service, but no internet. (Uses the [[latitude]] and [[longitude]] tags from Drafts 4. Using LCP to make it a single button push is optional.)
2. Save “Quick Pin.” Lets me quickly mark something on the map that I don’t have time to stop and explore now…doing it quickly is essential when you’re moving quickly in a vehicle. (Similar setup as above)

Those work pretty well if the GPS has already been active – if not, Drafts doesn’t wait for the most accurate position, so it can be off by 200m or so. If there were a way to do it with PE’s URL scheme, I’d use that.

And for what it’s worth, I can’t get any of the pe-remote://?screen=SCREEN functions to work in PE 2.5. Here are a couple scenarios I encounter all the time, and I’d love to be able to use URL schemes to save a few taps every time:

1. Search nearby. “What’s the closest Chinese restaurant?” Send text (“Chinese”) from Drafts or LCP straight into the search bar on PE, returning results sorted by distance.
2. Search my pins. “How far are we from that big acacia grove we passed on the way here?” (I’m not sure why the PE search results prioritize results from Maps above Favorites, but it always means scrolling down the list to find what I want.)

I hope that hearing what users are doing with these features is helpful as you continue developing them.

[Anonymous]

Where would I find a full listing of all of the URL scheme options?

[Anonymous]

Just as important to me would be if the URL scheme support call-backs, meaning after an incoming URL scheme was received, it could send data back to the calling application. That would be Huge!

Something like: pe-remote://?geolocate&response=fmp://~/AppName?script=logCoordinates&param=coordinates

Would grab my current location and send it back to the calling application

[Anonymous]

I was really hoping I would get an answer to where a listing of URL options could be found. I’ve looked in the documentation in the app, both the free version and the pro version, but can’t find anything on it – am I just missing it? Is on the web site somewhere?

[nounours]

@karstyn: my understanding is that the full options are documented in this thread … but you never know … geomagic has often some more magic hidden in his hand …

nounours

[Anonymous]

Thank you – and that may be the case. If so, then how did some of these users find out what some of them were?

If the URL scheme was expanded and documented this could be an even more powerful app. My own feeling is that most app developers are missing a huge opportunity by not embracing the url scheme and call-back urls in their apps – there can be great power when apps can interoperate.

[Author]

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