Places Search Bar

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An extension of Xamarin.Forms SearchBar control for implementing Google Places Autocomplete API.

Contributing

If you have problems, please make an attempt at fixing and improving the code, and raise a pull request. If you still can’t solve your problem then raise an issue, but please ensure that you include as much information as possible (stack traces, steps to reproduce). Please ensure that your issue is related to this library, not the general usage/debugging of the standard Xamarin Forms search bar.

Obtaining API key

Use the Google Developers Console to enable the ‘Google Places API Web Service’ and create a new API key.

Note: if you are developing for multi-platform you will likely need a separate API key for each device, and set your key property based on OS:

public static string ApiKey = Device.OS == TargetPlatform.iOS ? "add_ios_key_here" :
                                            TargetPlatform.Android ? "add_android_key_here" :
                                            TargetPlatform.WinPhone ? "add_winphone_key_here" :
                                            "...etc...";

Usage

Add the search bar namespace to your Xaml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ContentPage ...
             xmlns:places="clr-namespace:DurianCode.PlacesSearchBar;assembly=PlacesSearchBar">

…and then add the search bar to your layout:

<StackLayout>
        ...
        <places:PlacesBar x:Name="search_bar" />

The PlacesBar has the following properties and methods:

Type

An optional PlaceType value that sets the results based on a particular location Type

Bias

An optional LocationBias value that sets a custom location bias (see API docs for details)

ApiKey

A required string value

MinimumSearchText

An optional integer value for setting the minimum number of search characters the user should type before API calls are made (useful for stemming API call volume)

PlacesRetrieved

Subscribe to this event handler to receive search results as AutoCompleteResults objects

Retrieving Place details

The package also contains classes you can use to retrieve place details (including Latitude & Longitude)

Places class

A static class which exposes a GetPlace(placeID, apiKey) function which returns a Place object

Place class

A Place object contains Name, Latitude, Longitude and Raw (JSON response string) properties

Implementing PlacesBar

See the PlacesBarExamples solution included to see a Xamarin Forms project implementing the PlacesBar and GetPlace() features.

Notes

There is a known bug in Xamarin.Forms with Android N 7.0 where if a SearchBar’s height is not set, the search bar will not display. Please explicitly set HeightRequest value to avoid this issue.