Save current Google Map view as an image - image

Question

I have a database with some addresses. For each address the view of the map will be different.
Is there a way, for each address, to save the map view as an image?

Answer 1

<img src='http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/staticmap?center=<?php echo
$MyAddress?>CA&zoom=14&size=500x500&markers=<?php echo $myAddress?>&sensor=false' alt=''/>
The center is where the map will be centered.
The markers is the address you want so i put center=markers.
Zoom is how close you want to zoom in the map
Size the size you want of the picture.
Take a look here
http://code.google.com/intl/el-GR/apis/maps/documentation/staticmaps/

Answer 2

In this case you can use the Google Static Maps API, from here.
For storage and bandwidth purposes you can only storage the GeoPoint of the location and only render the image when the user requests it.

Answer 3

public static function getGoogleMapImage($params = array(), $saveTo = null, $https = true){
//set default parameters
if(!isset($params['markers'])){
$params['center'] = isset($params['center']) ? $params['center'] : 0;
$params['zoom'] = isset($params['zoom']) ? $params['zoom'] : 0;
}
$params['size'] = isset($params['size']) ? $params['size'] : '200x200';
$params['sensor'] = isset($params['sensor']) ? $params['sensor'] : 'false';
foreach($params as $name => $value){
$paramString.=$name . '=' . urlencode($value) . '&';
}
$paramString = trim($paramString, '&');
$httpPrefix = $https ? 'https://' : 'http://';
$imageUrl = $httpPrefix . 'maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/staticmap?' . $paramString;
if(!$saveTo){ //if you don't want to save image, just to display it
return $imageUrl;
}
if(isset($params['format'])){
switch($params['format']){
case 'png8': $imgExt = '.png'; break;
case 'gif': $imgExt = '.gif'; break;
case 'jpg': $imgExt = '.jpg'; break;
case 'jpg-baseline': $imgExt = '.jpg'; break;
default: $imgExt = '.png';
}
}else{
$imgExt = '.png';
}
$saveTo = preg_replace("/\\.[^.\\s]{3,4}$/", "", $saveTo) . $imgExt; //in case requested file extension and provided in $saveTo don't match
if(self::getImage($imageUrl, $saveTo)){
return realpath($saveTo);
}
return false;
}
I used curl call for getting images from created $imageUrl