android studio download google location services apis setonclicklistner Creating a Location-tracking App using Firebase and Google Maps in Android. In this tutorial, you will learn how to create an application that uses Google Maps API to determine the precise location of another user. We will achieve this by saving the users location on the Firebase Realtime Database and then retrieving the data from another device. Location services have recently become common among social apps that we use from day to day. Furthermore, these services can be used to track a lost or stolen device. Therefore, knowing how to implement location services can allow you to create more productive applications. From this tutorial, you will be able to come up with two simple applications to aid with location tracking. These projects use the Google Maps API and Firebase’s Realtime Database. Pre-requisites. A good understanding of Kotlin in Android development. Android Studio. For this tutorial, we shall use real Android devices for testing. However, you can use an emulator by mocking location data. You can read more here. Step 1 - Create a new project. Create a new project on Android Studio. On the select Project template page, choose the Google Maps Activity template. Wait for Android Studio to build your project. At this point after running the app you will see a blank screen, because you are yet to set up the API key for the map. A few things to note. Once you open the AndroidManifest.xml , you will see these auto-filled details: ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION permission. This accesses the user’s precise location. Mostly used when you require the most accurate location. Another type of location accuracy is the ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION , which is less accurate. Therefore, we shall be working with the ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION for accurate readings. The com.google.android.geo.API_KEY specifies the API key. Step 2 - Create an API key. You need to create an API key and enable it in the developer console before working with the Google Maps API . Use your Google account to sign up for this. Open res/values/google_maps_api.xml . This is what you will see. This file will contain your API key . Click on the underlined link and press create a project and continue. In the next screen, you will need to create an API key to call the API. The API key is in purple . Once you have the API key , copy and paste it in the value of google_maps_key in the XML file. The MapsActivity. This is an overview of the default MapsActivity . At this point, once you run the app, you will notice that the marker is in Sydney. Step 3 - Creating a Firebase project. We will use Firebase to store the user’s location. Once again, you will need a Google account. You can sign up here. Step 4 - Connect the Firebase project to the app. You now need to connect the project to your app. Go to tools>firebase. Make sure you add the Realtime Database to your app. Step 5 - Add permissions. Add the internet permission. This permission allows the application to connect to the internet and save data. Add the Google Maps location dependency. Step 6 - The MapsActivity. Navigate to MapsActivity.kt and add the following code. Step 7 - Run the app. Run the app. This is what you will achieve (locations may differ). Give the app location permission. The user location will be seen as shown below: From the code above, you have successfully saved the user’s location in a database. Navigate to the Firebase console and click on the project you had created. You should see something similar to this. The LocationChecker app. This second application allows you to retrieve the user’s location from the database. Step 1: Creating a new project. Follow the process discussed above to create a new project. Make sure you select the Google Maps template and name it appropriately. Step 2: Add credentials to an existing key. Since we already have an API key , we can just include it in the console. Open your developer’s console and click on the edit icon . Navigate to the google_maps_api.xml file and copy the package name and SHA-1 certificate fingerprint, paste these details on the add item section. Then, save the changes. Step 3: Adding a button. We need to add a button that will trigger the reading of the current location in the database. Here is the activity_maps.xml : Step 4: Adding permissions. By default, the GoogleMaps activity template adds the ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION permission in the AndroidManifest.xml file. Since we need the internet to read from the database, add the internet permission, as shown below: Step 4: The model class. Since we are reading from the database, we need a class that will add the attributes , latitude , and longitude to handle data. Step 5: The MapsActivity. Add the following code: When you run the app, you should be able to get a similar view (locations will differ): Testing the apps. Install both apps on your phone. Make sure the internet connection is good. Check the database for the saved location. On the second app, LocationChecker, check if the location was retrieved. You can download these projects from here and here. Conclusion. You can use the Maps API to create awesome apps or add more functionalities to existing ones. You can also add other features that might interest you. For instance, you can notify the user that they are being tracked. Peer Review Contributions by: Wanja Mike. About the author. Carol is an undergraduate student, pursuing a degree in Mathematics and Computer Science. She is an Android Developer with a speciality in Kotlin. She is also a GitHub Campus Expert. Carol loves growing the developer community in her school and Kenya generally. She loves reading African literature, listening to music, gaming, travelling and calligraphy. Want to learn more about the EngEd Program? Discover Section's community-generated pool of resources from the next generation of engineers. How to get current GPS location programmatically on Android? This example demonstrates how do I get current GPS location programmatically in android. Step 1 − Create a new project in Android Studio, go to File ⇒ New Project and fill all required details to create a new project. Step 2 − Add the following code to res/layout/activity_main.xml. Step 3 − Add the following code to src/MainActivity.java. Step 4 − Add the following code to androidManifest.xml. Let's try to run your application. I assume you have connected your actual Android Mobile device with your computer. To run the app from android studio, open one of your project's activity files and click Run icon from the toolbar. Select your mobile device as an option and then check your mobile device which will display your default screen − OnClickListener in Android Studio. I'm attempting to develop and app using the new Android Studio, but I keep receiving major errors on my OnClickListeners. Mainly it is telling me that it cannot resolve symbol "setOnClickListener" and it also cannot resolve "View v" That is the code in the class. Those are the errors I am receiving which makes absolutely no sense. Line 28 starts at when I do button.setOnClickListener. EDIT: Now I receive a force close when I press the button. This is the class it should open, a bare class with the only change being the layout to open. How to Implement Current Location Button Feature in Google Maps in Android? The current location is a feature on Google Maps, that helps us locate the device’s position on the Map. Through this article, while we will be implementing Google Maps, we shall also be implementing a button, which will fetch our current location and navigate it on the map. Note that we are going to implement this project using the Kotlin language. Screenshot of the actual Google Map App on Android device. Follow the below steps to implement a map and a button to navigate to the device’s current position. Step 1: Create a New Project in Android Studio. To create a new project in Android Studio please refer to How to Create/Start a New Project in Android Studio. We demonstrated the application in Kotlin, so make sure you select Kotlin as the primary language while creating a New Project. Step 2: Get and hide the API key. Our application utilizes Google’s Places API to implement Google Map, so we need to get the Places API key from Google. To get an API key, please refer to Generating API Keys For Using Any Google APIs. Hiding an API key is essential and to do so, please refer to How to Hide API and Secret Keys in Android Studio?. Step 3: Adding the dependencies in the build.gradle file. We need to add the below dependency for importing libraries to support the implementation of the Google Map. Step 4: Adding permissions to the application in the Manifest.xml file. As the application majorly deals with the current location, we give the application the permissions to access the location. To give the application such permissions, declare permissions between the manifest and application opening tags in the following way. Binding items with setOnClickListener to position. In my RecyclerView there are several items when click on them using setOnClickListener , Fragmet opens, but there is a problem, the position of the item is not attached to the setOnClickListener position is there, if I did the sorting and the position of the item changed, the position of the setOnClickListener is not, and the degree on the first item will always be open the same Fragmet .