#mapsapis

Introducing new Routes, Places, and Maps APIs for Amazon Location Service

The Routes, Places, and Maps features are expanded and improved by the 17 new and improved APIs that Amazon Location Service announced today, giving developers a more unified and efficient experience. These improvements increase the accessibility and utility of Amazon Location Service for a variety of applications by bringing new capabilities and providing a smooth migration process.

Advanced route optimization, GPS tracing, toll cost calculations, a range of map styles with static and dynamic rendering options, proximity-based search, predictive recommendations, and rich, detailed information on points of interest are all now available.

At Amazon, user feedback informs the great majority of its roadmaps. When working with location-based data, several customers developing applications with Amazon Location Service have expressed that they require more specific information, like contact details and business hours, as well as specially designed APIs. Developers have indicated a desire for further features, like comprehensive route planning, proximity-based searches, more place details, and static map graphics, even if the present API set has given many users useful tools. These needs are met by these new APIs, which offer a more thorough and unconventional location solution.

Improved and new capabilities

In direct response to your feedback, today’s launch provides seven completely new APIs and ten revised APIs. Specific improvements are made to each service Maps, Places, and Routes to accommodate a wider variety of use cases.

Routes

Advanced route planning and modification features are now available through the Amazon Location Routes API, enabling customers to:

Determine service regions within a certain travel time or distance by calculating isolines.

OptimizeWaypoints helps save trip time or distance by identifying the most effective waypoint sequence.

To offer accurate cost estimates for routes involving toll roads, compute toll costs.

SnapToRoads allows GPS traces to be precisely matched by snapping sites to the road network.

You may create more dynamic and accurate route experiences for your consumers with these features. For instance, a logistics firm may minimize delivery travel expenses by optimizing driver routes in real-time while accounting for real-time traffic.

Maps

More specially designed map types created by talented cartographers are now available in the revised Amazon Location Maps API. These map styles provide expert designs that remove the need for custom map construction and speed up time to market. Furthermore, developers can incorporate static maps into applications using the Static Map Image feature, which eliminates the requirement for constant data streaming and boosts performance in use scenarios when interactivity is not required.

Among the Maps API’s primary features are:

GetStyleDescriptor, which returns details about the style; GetTile, which downloads a tile from a tileset with a given X, Y, and Z axis values

GetStaticMap allows non-interactive maps to be rendered for reporting or display.

Places

In response to requests for more granularity in location data, the Amazon Location Places API has been improved to enable more thorough search capabilities. Among the new capabilities are:

For improved user experiences, SearchNearby and Autocomplete allow predictive text features and support proximity-based queries.

Improved company information including sections for contact details, business hours, and extra features for sites of interest

Applications like food delivery services or shop apps, where customers require comprehensive information about nearby locations, will particularly benefit from these functionalities. Consider a scenario in which a consumer launches a food delivery app, uses SearchNearby to find restaurants in their area, and downloads restaurant information, including contact details and business hours, to verify availability. The application utilizes OptimizeWaypoints to recommend the most effective route for pickups and deliveries after a driver has been assigned several delivery orders. SnaptoRoads improves the customer’s real-time tracking experience by providing a detailed depiction of the driver’s location as they follow the route.

The operation of enhanced location service

It is simple to call the API. You have three options: the basic REST API, one of AWS SDKs, or the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI). However, some further preparation is needed to display the data on a map in a web or mobile application. Despite having extensive documentation, the method is too intricate to go into detail here.

There are two methods for authenticating API requests with Amazon Location Service: using API keys or AWS API authentication (AWS Sigv4 authentication). For developers of mobile applications, API keys may be more practical in situations where end users are not verified or when integrating with Amazon Cognito is not practical. For front-end apps, this is the suggested authentication technique.

You utilize a combination of the AWS CLI, cURL, and a graphical REST API client to show the flexibility of the APIs and how simple it is to integrate them inside your apps.

Beginning

Amazon Location Service provides a more complete range of mapping and location data for your business needs with these updated and new APIs. These will improve the scalability and agility of developers, which will help you speed up your development lifecycle.

Explore the most recent version of the Amazon Location Service Developer Guide to get started, then start incorporating these features right now. You can also test the APIs using your preferred AWS SDKs to see how they can improve your apps.

Amazon location service pricing

Learn about the reasonable prices for maps, locations, routing, tracking, and geofencing offered by Amazon Location Service. Pay only for what you use; there are no up-front fees.

Pricing

You pay for the queries your application makes to the service listed in the table below after using the Amazon Location Service for free.

Volume discounts are available for customers with a monthly usage exceeding $5,000.

Price may vary based on request parameters, please refer to the Pricing section in the developer guide.

Amazon Location Service free trail

During the first three months of using Amazon Location Service, you can test it out with the free trial. You won’t be charged for monthly consumption during that period up to the amounts specified for the APIs indicated in the table below. You will be charged for the extra usage in accordance with the paid tier prices if your usage surpasses the free trial limits or utilizes Advanced, Premium, or Stored services.