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Nov 18, 2022 02:54 PM
I have an address field in my table that I would like to have go live while using my mobile device to help me quickly find an address.
Some Examples:
- My Phone Number field allows me to text or call directly from that field.
- My Link field allows me to invoke my browser or FB or IG app directly from that field.
- My Email field allows me in invoke my default mail program and compose.
I would like my “address” field to invoke my apple maps app on my phone and show me the location!
I understand my address field is simply a long text field used in this special way, but how about AT programming an address field to work in this fashion!?
Too much? Any ideas?
Thank you in advance
Jonathan
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Nov 19, 2022 03:31 PM
The three examples you cite are native iOS features that are dependent on custom protocols. For example, phone numbers are magically transformed into tel://212-555-1212
under the covers. There is no such protocol for address → geolocation for a number of reasons and the biggest is the encoding cost. Imagine if every we b page on the web and every address had to be geo-encoded; services that do this would be swamped.
Doing this for a narrow band of customers (like Airtable) would also be massive and only a small fraction of the users would want every address displayed to be geo-encoded. This leaves it up to you to create solutions where your addresses behave this way and it is possible.
You can easily fabricate a formula field that transforms an address into a link that looks like this.
https://www.google.com/maps/search/120+main+street,+st+george,+UT
The outcome of that URL is a map, and it can be done with Apple Maps too.
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Nov 22, 2022 12:28 PM
Hello Bill,
Thank you so much for taking the time to explain the behind the scenes magic that happens in those fields. I will do more research on the formula you proposed and see if I can get that to work. It will be pretty darn cool if it does!
Thank you again,
Best regards
Jonathan
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Nov 22, 2022 12:52 PM
Hello Bill,
I did notice that AT has a map Extension/Extensions by Airtable/Data Visualization, that mentions to one needs a working Google API key to use the extension. Is it possible to acquire an Apple Maps Server API key for the same purpose?
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/applemapsserverapi
I am totally unfamiliar with this Application Programming Interface stuff!
Thank you
Jonathan
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Nov 22, 2022 01:17 PM
Probably not for the same purpose and by that, I assume you mean in the existing Airtable Maps extension. The maps extension is Google-maps-specific and wouldn’t know what to do with an Apple Maps API key.
But, there are many ways to build map applications; just not trivial and generally not code free. The closest you can get to a no-code mapping solution embedded in Airtable is to build something in MapBox Studio and then use the rendering URL in the Airtable Embedded extension. I believe it may also be possible to pull Airtable data into MapBox Studio, so that would allow you to create maps based on your data, geo-encode it, and display it inside your Airtable solutions.
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