Location

Using the Google Play services location APIs, your app can request the last known location of the user’s device.

Set up Google Play services

• To access the fused location provider, your app’s development project must include Google Play services.

• Download and install the Google Play services component via the SDK Manager and add the library to your project.

Specify app permissions

To protect user privacy, apps that use location services must request location permissions.

Types of location access

• Category: Either foreground location or background location.
• Accuracy: Either precise location or approximate location.

Create location services client

In your activity’s onCreate() method, create an instance of the Fused Location Provider Client as the following code snippet shows.

private FusedLocationProviderClient fusedLocationClient;

// ..

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    // ...

    fusedLocationClient = LocationServices.getFusedLocationProviderClient(this);
}

Get the last known location

• Once you have created the Location Services client you can get the last known location of a user’s device.
• getLastLocation() method - to retrieve the device location. It returns a Task that you can use to get a Location object with the latitude and longitude coordinates of a geographic location.
• The location object may be null in the following situations - location is turned off in the device settings, device never recorded its location, and Google Play services on the device has restarted.

Choose the best location estimate

The FusedLocationProviderClient provides many ways to get the device location data,as the following:

1. getLastLocation() :it get the location quickly and minimize the battery usage ,but the location might be out of date if we don’t use this information fast.

2. getCurrentLocation() :it get updated and give accurate location but it still do computation on the device. this way is the best to get a fresh location ,and safer than using requestLocationUpdates().

Resources used in this reading

1. Get the last location