Notes on using Google Maps or Bing Maps
In Panopticon, the configuration of a custom map tile provider is static. The configuration is saved in a JSON file which is read by Panopticon on start up, and any change of the information will require a server restart. For this reason, it is not practical to use either one of Google Maps map tile servers or Bing Maps map tile servers, because:
- The Google Maps API requires that an API key is first used to retrieve a session token, with a POST request. Map tiles are subsequently loaded with GET requests from a URL where both the API key and the session token must be appended as URL request parameters. This means that the map tile URL will no longer work when the session token expires.
- The Bing Maps API has frequently changing map tile URLs, and to get currently valid map tile URLs, you must start by making a request to a special API endpoint, which returns currently valid map tile URLs as well as various metadata about the map tiles. This means that the map tile URL will work for some time, but eventually will become invalid.
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