Adding Route Functionality to flutter-maplibre-gl

[hatch01]

Hello everyone!

I was wondering if there are any plans to add route functionality to flutter-maplibre-gl. Routing is an essential feature in many location-based applications, and having this capability within the library would be incredibly helpful. It would allow us to easily display routes, calculate directions, and provide turn-by-turn navigation to our users.

I understand that there are alternative solutions available, such as using external routing APIs or integrating other Flutter packages specifically designed for routing. Nonetheless, having route functionality directly within flutter-maplibre-gl would streamline the development process and provide a more cohesive experience.

Thank you all for your contributions and support in advance. I look forward to your insights and suggestions!
Best regards,

[mariusvn]

I agree that it would be interesting.

The repo may still needs some stability work before implementing it tbh but it wouls be really nice to have, yes.

[ishafiul]

I think it's time MapLibre flutter had navigation. MapLibre has iOS and Android SDKs, so why not use it with Flutter? I'm very interested in working on this, but I think I need some guidelines.

[josxha]

I haven't looked into navigation with MapLibre myself yet. Because the iOS and Android navigation are implemented in their own SDKs I think it would be best to do the same for flutter too? I can try to help out with questions where I can.

There is also a new project called Ferrostar developed by StadiaMaps and written in Rust. I think it's still getting implemented but looking at their README they have now support for iOS and Android. Because it is built in Rust it could use the flutter_rust_bridge that has extensive code generation.
Maybe @ianthetechie could give some insights about the current state of the project and if they already considered bindings for flutter?

[ishafiul]

I also think that creating different SDKs for navigation would make more sense. I'll also join Ferrostar's Slack to better understand which one will be the best.

[ianthetechie]

Yes! Thanks for mentioning me @josxha!

Because the iOS and Android navigation are implemented in their own SDKs I think it would be best to do the same for flutter too? I can try to help out with questions where I can.

Yeah, same opinion here. Specifically (also addressing the OP @hatch01's remarks), I think that routing (data structure describing a sequence of maneuvers; API or local using something like valhalla mobile), navigation (real-time guidance through the steps, notification of deviation, recalculation, etc.), and map rendering are all separate. I think they should be separate at least at the library level, but that they can be composable to some extent. Let me expand on that a bit...

There is also a new project called Ferrostar developed by StadiaMaps and written in Rust. I think it's still getting implemented but looking at their README they have now support for iOS and Android. Because it is built in Rust it could use the flutter_rust_bridge that has extensive code generation.

Sorry for the long prelude, but that's what you need to understand the approach Ferrostar takes. It provides shared data models for core concepts like routes, offers an extensible "adapter" interface for working with routing engines (you can define these arbitrarily in user code as well without waiting for a PR), composable UI components which are platform-dependent (SwiftUI, Jetpack Compose, etc.), and platform-dependent maps.

The core (state management etc.) is more or less feature-complete. The (native) iOS and Android platforms have functional UIs which are solid beta and slightly rougher beta quality respectively.

I would also very much like to support Flutter (and React Native) as distinct platforms too. To make this happen, we'd need to wrap the (Rust) core and create a composable, idiomatic UI. The UI would ideally use Flutter MapLibre GL. You're not the first person to ask me about this recently, so there's an issue for the core and UI. Feedback + contribution welcome :) Let me know as I'm actually talking with a company this week that might contribute dev resources to make it happen so I want to coordinate efforts among anyone interested.