Question

I’m working with the Google Maps v3 API, and I have a custom overlay layer based on the ImageMapType class. I would like to show a loading indicator of some sort while the overlay’s tiles are loading, but I don’t see any way to know when they are finished.

The code to create the overlay looks similar to the following:

var myOverlay = new google.maps.ImageMapType({
    getTileUrl: myGetTileUrl,
    tileSize: new google.maps.Size(256, 256),
    isPng: true
});

myMap.overlayMapTypes.push(myOverlay);

The above works just fine, and the overlay successfully loads; it just seems that no events are emitted by the map to indicate anything about the ImageMapType overlay’s status.

I would expect the map to at least emit an “idle” event when the tiles are finished loading, but as far as I can tell it does not.

How may I know when the ImageMapType overlay is finished loading?

EDIT

I wrote a test case on jsFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/6yvcB/ — Watch your console output for the word “idled” to see when the idle event fires. Notice that it never fires when you click the button to add an overlay.

Also, kittens.

Answer 1

It would seem there’s no “out of the box” way to know when an ImageMapType overlay has finished loading, but thanks to a suggestion from Martin over on the Google Maps API v3 Forums I was able to add in my own custom event that is emitted when the layer finishes loading.

The basic approach is:

• Every time a URL is requested, add the URL to a list of pending URLs
• Override ImageMapType.getTile() so that we can add “onload” event listeners to each <img> element.
• When each image’s “load” event fires, remove that image from the list of pending URLs.
• When the list of pending URLs is empty, then emit our custom “overlay-idle” event.

I’ve copied the code below for posterity, but you can see it in action on jsFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/6yvcB/22/

// Create a base map
var options = {
    zoom: 3,
    center: new google.maps.LatLng(37.59, -99.13),
    mapTypeId: "terrain"
};
var map = new google.maps.Map($("#map")[0], options);

// Listen for the map to emit "idle" events
google.maps.event.addListener(map, "idle", function(){
    console.log("map is idle");
});

// Keep track of pending tile requests
var pendingUrls = [];

$("#btn").click(function() {
    var index = 0;   
    var urls = [ "http://placekitten.com/256/256", 
                 "http://placekitten.com/g/256/256",
                 "http://placekitten.com/255/255", 
                 "http://placekitten.com/g/255/255",
                 "http://placekitten.com/257/257", 
                 "http://placekitten.com/g/257/257" ];

    var overlay = new google.maps.ImageMapType({
        getTileUrl: function() { 
            var url = urls[index % urls.length];
            index++;

            // Add this url to our list of pending urls
            pendingUrls.push(url);

            // if this is our first pending tile, signal that we just became busy
            if (pendingUrls.length === 1) {
                 $(overlay).trigger("overlay-busy");   
            }

            return url; 
        },
        tileSize: new google.maps.Size(256, 256),
        isPng: true,
        opacity: 0.60
    });

    // Listen for our custom events
    $(overlay).bind("overlay-idle", function() {
        console.log("overlay is idle"); 
    });

    $(overlay).bind("overlay-busy", function() {
        console.log("overlay is busy"); 
    });


    // Copy the original getTile function so we can override it, 
    // but still make use of the original function
    overlay.baseGetTile = overlay.getTile;

    // Override getTile so we may add event listeners to know when the images load
    overlay.getTile = function(tileCoord, zoom, ownerDocument) {

        // Get the DOM node generated by the out-of-the-box ImageMapType
        var node = overlay.baseGetTile(tileCoord, zoom, ownerDocument);

        // Listen for any images within the node to finish loading
        $("img", node).one("load", function() {

            // Remove the image from our list of pending urls
            var index = $.inArray(this.__src__, pendingUrls);
            pendingUrls.splice(index, 1);

            // If the pending url list is empty, emit an event to 
            // indicate that the tiles are finished loading
            if (pendingUrls.length === 0) {
                $(overlay).trigger("overlay-idle");
            }
        });

        return node;
    };

    map.overlayMapTypes.push(overlay);
});