Get Started

This guide walks you through the first steps to build apps with the HERE SDK for Flutter. The HERE SDK for Flutter is tailored to bring the best and freshest assets from the HERE platform to your mobile applications.

Before you begin, make sure you have read the following:

• About this Edition
• Minimum Requirements
• Supported Devices

In order to start development, you need to get the HERE SDK package:

Please contact us to receive access including a set of evaluation credentials. For now, the Navigate Edition is only available upon request. The HERE SDK package for the Navigate Edition is available on the HERE platform portal. Make sure you have access, then:

1. On the platform portal browse to the Navigate Edition. Choose the Flutter platform.
2. Click the Get Now button. Note that the package will download in the background. Be patient, it may take a while.
3. Unzip the package. It includes the HERE SDK plugin to include in your app(s), a set of example apps, this documentation and some more useful files.

Get Your Credentials

The HERE SDK for Flutter requires two strings to authenticate your app:

• ACCESS KEY ID: A unique ID for your account.
• ACCESS KEY SECRET: A secret key, which is shown only once after creation time. Please make sure to note it down before leaving developer.here.com.

No other credentials or tokens are needed to use the HERE SDK. You can register and manage your app as described in the Identity & Access Management guide.

Note that these credentials can be reused for more than one app. For example, they will work with all example apps you can find on here.

When you obtain your credentials, also an APP ID is generated. This ID is not consumed by the HERE SDK, but it is recommended to mention it when contacting the HERE support team.

To obtain your personal ACCESS KEY ID (access_key_id) and ACCESS KEY SECRET (access_key_secret), do the following:

Please contact your HERE representative to receive access including a set of evaluation credentials. For now, the Navigate Edition is only available upon request.

The below section shows how to set the credentials for an app.

Try the Example Apps

The easiest way to get started, is to try one of the example projects that are available for the HERE SDK.

Choose an example of your choice, then set your credentials for the individual Android and iOS projects:

Inside the example app's folder, open /android/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml and set your credentials (key / secret):

<meta-data android:name="com.here.sdk.access_key_id" android:value="YOUR_ACCESS_KEY_ID"/>
<meta-data android:name="com.here.sdk.access_key_secret" android:value="YOUR_ACCESS_KEY_SECRET"/>

Open /ios/Runner/Info.plist and set your credentials (key / secret):

<key>AccessKeyId</key>
<string>YOUR_ACCESS_KEY_ID</string>
<key>AccessKeySecret</key>
<string>YOUR_ACCESS_KEY_SECRET</string>

Now add the HERE SDK plugin folder:

1. Unzip the downloaded HERE SDK for Flutter package. This folder contains various files including this documentation.
2. Inside you will find a TAR file that contains the HERE SDK for Flutter plugin.
3. Now unzip the TAR file and rename the folder to 'here_sdk' and place it to the plugins folder inside the example app's directory.

Finally, make sure that a device is attached or that an emulator (Android) or simulator (iOS) is running. Execute flutter run from the directory of the example on your terminal - or run the app from within your IDE.

Feel free to experiment with the code of the examples. You can also follow the guide below to get a more detailed introduction on how to use the HERE SDK to build apps.

Create a New Flutter Project and Show a HERE Map

As a very first step-by-step example, we will develop a "Hello Map" Flutter application that shows - yes! - a map. If you want to integrate the HERE SDK into an existing application, you can skip this step. No specific SDK code is involved here.

If you are new to Flutter, please follow the guides on flutter.dev to help you get started with the first steps.

The example code for "hello_map" is available from here.

You don't need any advanced Flutter or Android or iOS experience to follow this step-by-step instruction.

For this guide, we have used Android Studio version 4.1.2 and Xcode version 12.5. In addition, we have used:

• Flutter 1.22.5
• Dart version 2.10.4

Newer versions may also work, but are not guaranteed to work. The Flutter version 1.22.0 and Dart 2.10.0 are also supported. It is recommended to use the Dart version that is bundled with Flutter.

Note: This guide does not cover changes that might be needed when you are migrating your app from a Flutter version that is older than the minium supported Flutter version 1.22.0. All example apps in this guide are compliant with the Flutter V2 plugin architecture. By default, new app projects created with Android Studio are already ready for V2 plugins when Flutter version 1.12 or higher is used.

Step 1: Create a Flutter Project

To create a new HERE SDK for Flutter project:

First, create a new Flutter project, we have called it "hello_map". Make sure you can run your new Flutter project on an Android and iOS device of your choice to make sure that your Flutter SDK is configured correctly. If it does not work, please refer to the Flutter documentation.

If you don't want to support both platforms, you can skip the steps for either iOS or Android. Note that the HERE SDK for Flutter does not support web and desktop apps.

Step 2: Integrate the HERE SDK into Your App

As soon as you have verified that everything is set up correctly, it's time to integrate the HERE SDK for Flutter.

Note that the HERE SDK is only available as a separate download. Artifactory support is not yet available.

Unzip the downloaded HERE SDK for Flutter package. This package contains various files including this documentation:

• A license file.
• The Developer's Guide.
• The API Reference.
• The Release Notes.
• A TAR file containing the HERE SDK for Flutter plugin. The file is named like this: here_sdk-<edition>-<version>.release.tar.gz.

Unzip the TAR file, then rename the folder to here_sdk. The content of the plugin folder looks similar like below:

Now create a plugins folder inside your project and copy the renamed plugin folder to this new folder. With this, the content of the plugin folder is contained in hello_map/plugins/here_sdk.

Open the pubspec.yaml file of your Flutter project and add the path from above to the dependencies section. If you are not sure where to add this, it should look as follows:

dependencies:
  flutter:
    sdk: flutter

  cupertino_icons: ^0.1.3

  # The following adds the HERE SDK for Flutter plugin folder to your application.
  here_sdk:
    path: plugins/here_sdk

Of course, if you want, you can rename the plugin folder and adjust the path.

If the path is specified correctly, you can execute flutter pub get from your terminal and the HERE SDK should appear in your project tree. For example, if you are using Android Studio, it will appear under External Libraries -> Flutter Plugins.

After you have executed flutter pub get (or clicked the respective Pub get button in Android Studio or any other IDE), a new Podfile is created for iOS. Open hello_map/ios/Podfile and set the platform to the minimum supported iOS version:

# Uncomment this line to define a global platform for your project.
platform :ios, '12.4'

Now, adjust the minimum supported Android SDK version. Open /hello_map/android/app/build.gradle to change the minSdkVersion to:

minSdkVersion 21

Step 3: Set Your Credentials to Authenticate the HERE SDK

Finally, it's time to set the credentials for authenticating the HERE SDK.

Open /hello_map/android/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml and add the following meta-data tags nested under the <application> tag:

<application
    android:name="io.flutter.app.FlutterApplication"
    android:label="hellomap"
    android:icon="@mipmap/ic_launcher">

<meta-data android:name="com.here.sdk.access_key_id" android:value="YOUR_ACCESS_KEY_ID"/>
<meta-data android:name="com.here.sdk.access_key_secret" android:value="YOUR_ACCESS_KEY_SECRET"/>
...

Do the same for iOS, then open /hello_map/ios/Runner/Info.plist and add:

<key>HERECredentials</key>
<dict>
    <key>AccessKeyId</key>
    <string>YOUR_ACCESS_KEY_ID</string>
    <key>AccessKeySecret</key>
    <string>YOUR_ACCESS_KEY_SECRET</string>
</dict>

<key>io.flutter.embedded_views_preview</key>
<true/>

Make sure to set your own credentials (key / secret).

Note that we also added the key io.flutter.embedded_views_preview, since the HERE SDK map is natively rendered as UiKitView.

Now, all preparation work is done and you can start using the HERE SDK.

Step 4: Show a HERE Map

Let's start coding.

Below you can see how to show a HERE map view. Remove all the code from your main.dart file and replace it with the following:

import 'package:flutter/material.dart';
import 'package:here_sdk/core.dart';
import 'package:here_sdk/mapview.dart';

void main() {
  SdkContext.init(IsolateOrigin.main);
  runApp(MyApp());
}

class MyApp extends StatelessWidget {
  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return MaterialApp(
      title: 'HERE SDK for Flutter - Hello Map!',
      home: HereMap(onMapCreated: _onMapCreated),
    );
  }

  void _onMapCreated(HereMapController hereMapController) {
    hereMapController.mapScene.loadSceneForMapScheme(MapScheme.normalDay,
        (MapError error) {
      if (error != null) {
        print('Map scene not loaded. MapError: ${error.toString()}');
        return;
      }

      const double distanceToEarthInMeters = 8000;
      hereMapController.camera.lookAtPointWithDistance(
          GeoCoordinates(52.530932, 13.384915), distanceToEarthInMeters);
    });
  }
}

The HERE SDK requires initialization of its native libraries via SdkContext, which should happen before your app widget is started. Therefore, we updated the main() function of the Flutter project.

Since the HereMap is already implemented as a stateful widget, you can set it directly as the home for your app. The private _onMapCreated callback notifies us when the HereMapController instance is created. The HereMapController allows you to interact with the map.

Before you can see any vector tiles on the map, we must load a map scheme. Here we load MapScheme.normalDay. As an exercise, try out other available map schemes.

The view onto the map can be defined via the camera object. In the example above we show a location in Berlin, Germany.

Step 5: Run Your App

Now, it's time to build and run the app. Attach a device or start an emulator or simulator and execute flutter run from the app's directory - or run the app from within your IDE. If all goes well, you should see a HERE map covering the screen.

Additional Information

You can find the most common usage principles to help you get the most out of the HERE SDK for Flutter in the Key Concepts section.

What's Next?

This is quick start guide is just a starting point. Take a look at our example apps and browse through the API Reference to discover a lot more exciting features. With the next releases we plan more tutorials and example apps. Stay tuned and thank you for using the HERE SDK for Flutter!

Troubleshooting

When you run into trouble, please make sure to first check the minimum requirements and the supported devices.

• Xcode does not compile my project for simulators. I am using a computer with a M1 chip. Try to exclude the arm64 architecture for "Any iOS Simulator SDK" in the Build Settings/Architectures/Excluded Architectures/Debug setting within Xcode.

Need Help?

If you need help with this or any other HERE product, select one of the options below.

• If you have a HERE representative, contact them when you have questions/issues.
• If you manage your applications and accounts through developer.here.com, log into your account and check the pages on the SLA report.
• If you have more questions, please check stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/here-api.
• If you have questions about billing, your account, or anything else Contact Us.
• If you have purchased your plan/product from a HERE reseller, contact your reseller.