Place Photos

You can use the Places SDK for iOS to request place photos to display in your application. Photos returned by the photos service come from a variety of sources, including business owners and user-contributed photos. To retrieve photos for a place, you must take the following steps:

  1. Call [GMSPlacesClient fetchPlaceFromPlaceId], passing a string with a place ID and a callback. This will call the callback with a GMSPlacePhotoMetadataList object.
  2. On the GMSPlacePhotoMetadataList object access the results property and select the photos to load from the array.
  3. For each GMSPlacePhotoMetadata to load from this list call [GMSPlacesClient loadPlacePhoto:callback:] or [GMSPlacesClient loadPlacePhoto:constrainedToSize:scale:callback:]. These will call the callback with a usable UIImage. Photos can have a maximum width or height of 1600 pixels.

Sample code

The following example method takes a place ID and gets the first photo in the returned list. You can use this method as a template for the method you will create in your own app.

Swift

// Specify the place data types to return (in this case, just photos).
let fields: GMSPlaceField = GMSPlaceField(rawValue: UInt(GMSPlaceField.photos.rawValue))!

placesClient?.fetchPlace(fromPlaceID: "INSERT_PLACE_ID_HERE",
                         placeFields: fields,
                         sessionToken: nil, callback: {
  (place: GMSPlace?, error: Error?) in
  if let error = error {
    print("An error occurred: \(error.localizedDescription)")
    return
  }
  if let place = place {
    // Get the metadata for the first photo in the place photo metadata list.
    let photoMetadata: GMSPlacePhotoMetadata = place.photos![0]

    // Call loadPlacePhoto to display the bitmap and attribution.
    self.placesClient?.loadPlacePhoto(photoMetadata, callback: { (photo, error) -> Void in
      if let error = error {
        // TODO: Handle the error.
        print("Error loading photo metadata: \(error.localizedDescription)")
        return
      } else {
        // Display the first image and its attributions.
        self.imageView?.image = photo;
        self.lblText?.attributedText = photoMetadata.attributions;
      }
    })
  }
})

Objective-C

// Specify the place data types to return (in this case, just photos).
GMSPlaceField fields = (GMSPlaceFieldPhotos);

NSString *placeId = @"INSERT_PLACE_ID_HERE";

[_placesClient fetchPlaceFromPlaceID:placeId placeFields:fields sessionToken:nil callback:^(GMSPlace * _Nullable place, NSError * _Nullable error) {
  if (error != nil) {
    NSLog(@"An error occurred %@", [error localizedDescription]);
    return;
  }
  if (place != nil) {
    GMSPlacePhotoMetadata *photoMetadata = [place photos][0];
    [self->_placesClient loadPlacePhoto:photoMetadata callback:^(UIImage * _Nullable photo, NSError * _Nullable error) {
      if (error != nil) {
        NSLog(@"Error loading photo metadata: %@", [error localizedDescription]);
        return;
      } else {
        // Display the first image and its attributions.
        self->imageView.image = photo;
        self->lblText.attributedText = photoMetadata.attributions;
      }
    }];
  }
}];

Caching

Photos loaded using [GMSPlacesClient loadPlacePhoto:callback:] or [GMSPlacesClient loadPlacePhoto:constrainedToSize:scale:callback:] are cached both on disk and in-memory by the Foundation URL loading system in the shared NSURLCache.

To configure the caching behavior you can change the shared URL cache using [NSURLCache setSharedURLCache:] in your application delegate's application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: method.

If you don't want your application to share a NSURLCache with the Places SDK for iOS you can create a new NSURLCache and use this exclusively within your app without setting it as the shared cache.

Attributions

In most cases, place photos can be used without attribution, or will have the required attribution included as part of the image. However, if the returned GMSPlacePhotoMetadata instance includes an attribution, you must include the additional attribution in your application wherever you display the image. Note that links in the attribution must be tappable. See the documentation on attributions.

Usage limits

Retrieving an image costs one unit of quota; there are no usage limits for retrieving photo metadata. Read more about usage and billing.