In the Google Maps API v2 Demo there is a MarkerDemoActivity
class in which you can see how a custom Image is set to a GoogleMap.
// Uses a custom icon.
mSydney = mMap.addMarker(new MarkerOptions()
.position(SYDNEY)
.title("Sydney")
.snippet("Population: 4,627,300")
.icon(BitmapDescriptorFactory.fromResource(R.drawable.arrow)));
As this just replaces the marker with an image you might want to use a Canvas
to draw more complex and fancier stuff:
Bitmap.Config conf = Bitmap.Config.ARGB_8888;
Bitmap bmp = Bitmap.createBitmap(80, 80, conf);
Canvas canvas1 = new Canvas(bmp);
// paint defines the text color, stroke width and size
Paint color = new Paint();
color.setTextSize(35);
color.setColor(Color.BLACK);
// modify canvas
canvas1.drawBitmap(BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(),
R.drawable.user_picture_image), 0,0, color);
canvas1.drawText("User Name!", 30, 40, color);
// add marker to Map
mMap.addMarker(new MarkerOptions()
.position(USER_POSITION)
.icon(BitmapDescriptorFactory.fromBitmap(bmp))
// Specifies the anchor to be at a particular point in the marker image.
.anchor(0.5f, 1));
This draws the Canvas canvas1
onto the GoogleMap mMap
. The code should (mostly) speak for itself, there are many tutorials out there how to draw a Canvas
. You can start by looking at the Canvas and Drawables from the Android Developer page.
Now you also want to download a picture from an URL.
URL url = new URL(user_image_url);
HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
conn.setDoInput(true);
conn.connect();
InputStream is = conn.getInputStream();
bmImg = BitmapFactory.decodeStream(is);
You must download the image from an background thread (you could use AsyncTask or Volley or RxJava for that).
After that you can replace the BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.drawable.user_picture_image)
with your downloaded image bmImg
.