Have you ever been in a new city and needed to find dining options within two miles, or wanted to explore historical landmarks? Applications that support points of interest (POI) search or the ability to find places within a certain radius of the user’s location are built using services like ArcGIS Places service. This service provides detailed place information on a map, empowering developers to create engaging applications that help users discover places and points of interest worldwide
The backbone of the Places service is its data. Points of interest and other types of place data support users across various industries by providing valuable location-based context for mapping, analysis, and decision-making. Esri sources its data from multiple sources, and it’s vetted for accuracy and regularly updated, offering developers unparalleled precision and accuracy to enhance their applications.
Functionalities of the Places Service
The Places service is a powerful tool designed to help developers and users find and interact with places in various ways. Let’s delve into some of its key features.
Nearby Search
The Nearby Search feature of the Places service allows developers to find and display places like points of interest within a specified radius of a given location. For example, if an app user is at a park and wants to locate the nearest coffee shops, developers can use this feature to list and show options on a map, enhancing the user experience with relevant and timely information. This functionality is particularly useful for applications that need to provide users with quick access to nearby amenities.
Bounding Box Search
A bounding box search is used to find places within a defined extent, which typically represents the visible area of a map. You can utilize this search to find and display places within the current map’s extent. For example, if you zoom into a city on a map, you can find all the libraries within that view. This feature is ideal for applications that need to provide a comprehensive list of places within a user’s current map view, such as city guides or event-based apps.
Place Categories
Place categories are structures that group related places together. Each category has a unique category ID and category label. Categories help refine the results of nearby and bounding box searches, making it easier to filter and display relevant places. Categories are organized hierarchically into “levels”, providing more detailed descriptions. Here are a few examples of level 1 categories and some level 2 categories associated with them:
- Arts and Entertainment: amusement park, art gallery, casino, exhibit, movie theater, museum, stadium, water park, zoo
- Business and Professional Services: construction, convention center, food and beverage service, health and beauty service
- Community and Government: education, organization, government building, community center, library, utility company
- Dining and Drinking: bakery, bar, cafe, coffee, and tea house, restaurant
- Retail: arts and crafts store, bookstore, convenience store, and department store
Place icons can be used to visually describe top-level place categories and many specific child categories on a map. To style places with the correct icons, you can use the place icons resource. Imagine you are developing a city guide app that helps users explore various points of interest. You can use place icons to ensure that each type of place is clearly marked on the map.
For example, when a user searches for “hotels” in a city, all hotel locations are displayed with a distinct hotel icon. This visual distinction helps make the map more intuitive and allows users to quickly find and differentiate between the types of places they are interested in. Icons can be returned in different formats, including PNG, SVG, and CIM Symbol.
Leveraging the Places Service
We’ve been talking about how the ArcGIS Places service can enhance developer applications with place details and other valuable information. There are also great examples at Esri where we leverage the Places service to add value to our other capabilities. One example is Basemap places, a powerful feature of our global vector basemaps that enables users to interactively obtain additional details about points of interest by clicking on the map. Learn more about Basemap places.
Add Robust Tools to Your Application
By leveraging these features, developers can create rich, interactive mapping applications that provide valuable information and empower users to navigate the world around them more seamlessly. Whether it’s helping users find the nearest coffee shop, exploring historical landmarks, or discovering community resources, ArcGIS Places service offers a robust set of tools to enhance the user experience and drive engagement in your applications.
Get Started with Places
Ready to start using the Places service? Go to your dashboard to get started.
Learn more about developing with places in your application. Read about the Places services in our developer documentation and get tutorials and information to get you started.
If you’re new to ArcGIS Location Platform, create your account today!
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