List of supported countries

[mvl22]

An API call will be available shortly giving a list of the countries that the CycleStreets API will route in.

It would be good to list these in the About/Settings area.

[oliverlockwood]

@mvl22 is this API call available yet?

[mvl22]

We do now have a prototype API call, but we need to implement a few things following a policy discussion last night. Will let you know when this is ready.

[oliverlockwood]

@mvl22 Just skimming through old issues... any update on this?

[oliverlockwood]

Also, after reading https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/7550024?hl=en I was able to find out that we're currently available (according to the Android Play Store) in UK, Ireland, Netherlands & Czech Republic.

So when that API call is available and we want to include its information, we also need to make sure we keep those settings in the Developer Console in synch.

[oliverlockwood]

@mvl22 ping

[oliverlockwood]

I've now switched this to be labelled as "Server issue".

[mvl22]

Could you e-mail me about this to remind me to send some more detailed info that I need to check on and I may be able to sort out the thing which has been blocking this.

[mvl22]

NB Is there an Android methodology in terms of country IDs that we can adopt by putting them in our JSON output to enable Store availability automatically?

[oliverlockwood]

Email sent.

I think the most important thing is to return the response with a list of standard 2-letter country codes (perhaps in a tuple alongside their user-friendly names).

I can't find any evidence of being able to programmatically set the availability, but we might be able to programmatically check the Play Store availability in our builds.

The closest I've got in 5 minutes (without having to pay money to anyone) is to hit e.g. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.cyclestreets&gl=gb from an incognito browser window; if you then change gb to something else e.g. de, fr, the Install button disappears. So it's doable at the very least in a hacky way 😄

[mvl22]

We have an API call which gives a GeoJSON of the exact routeable areas.

The ideal is that when the user clicks on a map location in the journey planner in an area that is outside these GeoJSON zones, there should be a modal dialog stating that “Routing is not available in this location.”

It would be good if the mechanics for this start to be put in place.

[oliverlockwood]

@mvl22 can you please share details of that "routeable areas" API call - either here or in an email to me?
I can certainly use that info to create the modal dialog you describe (which I would have found useful when in Austria last September!)

In terms of a list of countries, then, I can see a number of options:

1. Expose another API which gives a list of countries (as suggested by the original description of this issue)
2. Dynamically generate a list of countries from the "routeable areas" API
3. Manually work out a list of countries from looking at the API output
4. You post a list of countries here, and we manually update it every now and again.