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Wiki  >  TechNet Articles  >  Windows Phone 8 Development: Maps and Clusters

Windows Phone 8 Development: Maps and Clusters

Windows Phone 8 Development: Maps and Clusters

This code example demonstrates how to dynamically group pushpins in the map control.

There is a lot of code for Windows Phone 7, then I merged all what I need to create a project for WP8.



First of all you need some namespace declaration: for map control and for pushpins from WP Toolkit.



xmlns:map="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Phone.Maps.Controls;assembly=Microsoft.Phone.Maps"
 
xmlns:maptk="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Phone.Maps.Toolkit;assembly=Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Toolkit"
 


You need also two templates: one for a standard pushpin and the other for the cluster.



<phone:PhoneApplicationPage.Resources>
    <DataTemplate x:Key="PushpinTemplate">
        <maptk:Pushpin GeoCoordinate="{Binding GeoCoordinate}" Content="{Binding}" />
    </DataTemplate>
    <DataTemplate x:Key="ClusterTemplate">
        <maptk:Pushpin GeoCoordinate="{Binding GeoCoordinate}" Content="{Binding Count}"/>
    </DataTemplate>
</phone:PhoneApplicationPage.Resources>


ClustersGenerator is the core of the project. It's a static class that accepts in input:
  • Map control
  • Pushpins collection
  • Cluster DataTemplate  
public ClustersGenerator(Map map, List<Pushpin> pushpins, DataTemplate clusterTemplate)
{
    _map = map;
    _pushpins = pushpins;
    this.ClusterTemplate = clusterTemplate;
 
    // maps event
    _map.ResolveCompleted += (s, e) => GeneratePushpins();
 
    // first generate
    GeneratePushpins();
}

Every map event launches the pushpins elaboration, but first to explain GeneratePushpins method, let's introduce another class: PushpinGroup.

PushpinGroup represents a standard pushpin or a cluster, and exposes a GetElement method to return them. If the group is a cluster, it needs to get only the first pushpin GeoCoordinate and the content is a group of all pushpins.

public class PushpinsGroup
{
    private List<Pushpin> _pushpins = new List<Pushpin>();
    public Point MapLocation { get; set; }
 
    public PushpinsGroup(Pushpin pushpin, Point location)
    {
        _pushpins.Add(pushpin);
        MapLocation = location;
    }
 
    public FrameworkElement GetElement(DataTemplate clusterTemplate)
    {
        if (_pushpins.Count == 1)
            return _pushpins[0];
 
        // more pushpins
        return new Pushpin()
        {
            // just need the first coordinate
            GeoCoordinate = _pushpins.First().GeoCoordinate,
            Content = _pushpins.Select(p => p.DataContext).ToList(),
            ContentTemplate = clusterTemplate,
        };
    }
 
    public void IncludeGroup(PushpinsGroup group)
    {
        foreach (var pin in group._pushpins)
            _pushpins.Add(pin);
    }
}

The GeneratePushipins function creates clusters based on map ViewPort and a constant named MAXDISTANCE. An extension method convert pushpin GeoCoordinate to a ViewPort Point. That is used to get the distance from other points. If this distance is less then the MAXDISTANCE, the pushpin become a part of cluster.

private void GeneratePushpins()
{
    List<PushpinsGroup> pushpinsToAdd = new List<PushpinsGroup>();
    foreach (var pushpin in _pushpins)
    {
        bool addGroup = true;
        var newGroup = new PushpinsGroup(pushpin, _map.ConvertGeoCoordinateToViewportPoint(pushpin.GeoCoordinate));
 
        foreach (var pushpinToAdd in pushpinsToAdd)
        {
            double distance = pushpinToAdd.MapLocation.GetDistanceTo(newGroup.MapLocation);
 
            if (distance < MAXDISTANCE)
            {
                pushpinToAdd.IncludeGroup(newGroup);
                addGroup = false;
                break;
            }
        }
 
        if (addGroup)
            pushpinsToAdd.Add(newGroup);
    }
 
    _map.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(() =>
    {
        _map.Layers.Clear();
        MapLayer layer = new MapLayer();
        foreach (var visibleGroup in pushpinsToAdd.Where(p => _map.IsVisiblePoint(p.MapLocation)))
        {
            var cluster = visibleGroup.GetElement(this.ClusterTemplate) as Pushpin;
            if (cluster != null)
            {
                layer.Add(new MapOverlay() { GeoCoordinate = cluster.GeoCoordinate, Content = cluster.Content, ContentTemplate = cluster.ContentTemplate});
            }
        }
        if (layer.Count > 0)
            _map.Layers.Add(layer);
    });
}

The extension method GetDistanceTo is the algorithm to calculate the distance between two points:

public static double GetDistanceTo(this Point p1, Point p2)
{
    return Math.Sqrt((p1.X - p2.X) * (p1.X - p2.X) + (p1.Y - p2.Y) * (p1.Y - p2.Y));
}

Instead IsPointVisible returns true if the point is visible in the map, otherwise false:

public static bool IsVisiblePoint(this Map map, Point point)
{
    return point.X > 0 && point.X < map.ActualWidth && point.Y > 0 && point.Y < map.ActualHeight;
}

Now in your MainPage.xaml, you only need to pass all pushpins to the ClusterGenerator and it will do all work for you.

var clusterer = new ClustersGenerator(map, pushpins, this.Resources["ClusterTemplate"] as DataTemplate);

You can download all code here.

See Also

Another important place to find a huge amount of Windows Phone related articles is the TechNet Wiki itself. The best entry point is Windows Phone Resources on the TechNet Wiki.
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