Is there any easy way to duplicate the search functionality of the Google Maps app on iPhone?

Question

I'd like to be able to search and have the results pop up as annotations just like the Maps app on the iPhone. How do I go about doing it, and how difficult is it?

Answer 1

You need a forward geocoder to take a string (from your search bar) and find a list of possible matches, with coordinates and such. ... there isn't one included with the MapKit (only a reverse geocoder -- from coordinates to address string). However, there's a few services out that that do this. I think GeoSimple, CloudMaps, and a few others. The one linked below is an objective-c package that pulls results from Google Maps SDK.

http://blog.sallarp.com/ipad-iphone-forward-geocoding-api-google/