Revision as of 05:24, 24 April 2013 by hamishwillee (Talk | contribs)

HERE Maps API - How to create a Tooltip

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This article explains how to use CSS styling to create an tooltip. It is an example of the use of the mouseover and mouseout events.



A tooltip is a GUI element that appears when the cursor hovers over an associated point of interest. It usually contains some text with more information about the item concerned, typically a short descriptive label. This leaves the screen uncluttered by hiding these summaries unless the point of interest has focus. It is impossible to click on a tooltip, since the tooltip will disappear as soon as its associated point of interest loses focus. A more common clickable alternative to the tooltip is the InfoBubble, which is part of the standard API. Since tooltips are only used on a subset of mapping applications, they do not come as standard as part of the Nokia Maps API, if tooltip functionality is required in an application, it is a simple matter to add tooltips to map markers with a few lines of code.

Coded Example

In HTML, a tooltip is simply an extra <div> element, which is dynamically styled to appear or disappear as associated markers gain or lose focus.

1) Inject an extra DIV into the DOM

Assume the web page holds a map in the following <div> element

	<div id="mapContainer"></div>

After setting up the map in the usual manner, we need to inject an additional <div> into the DOM - this will eventually hold the text of the tooltip.

var node = document.createElement("div");
node.className = 'nm_bubble_content';
node.id = 'nm_tooltip';

The <div> element above has been given a unique id, and therefore can be styled directly using CSS:

position: absolute;
border: 1px solid black;
padding-left: 1em;
padding-right: 1em;
display: none;
min-width: 120px;

The three important CSS attributes here are background, color and display. A fixed background colour needs to be set so that the tooltip itself is displayed over the map, color will need to contrast with the background of course. The display must initially be set to none so that the tooltip <div> element is initially invisible. The other CSS style attributes such as padding and border can be altered as you see fit. It is also possible to style the <div> using its style class.

2) Add an "onHover" effect by handling mouseover and mouseout events.

We want to display the tooltip <div> whenever a map object which has an associated $tooltip attribute gains focus. In order to avoid writing multiple event listeners, we will add a listener to the map itself, and check which object has triggered the event within the listener function. Hiding and displaying the tooltip is only the relevant for objects with a $tooltip attribute, and the presence of this can be determined through using a undefined check The tooltip is displayed by setting its style to display:block.

map.addListener("mouseover", function(evt) {
if (( evt.target.$tooltip === undefined) == false){
document.getElementById("nm_tooltip").style.display ='block';

Similarly the tooltip <div> can be hidden whenever an object with a $tooltip attribute loses focus. Optionally a third listener for click events could be added here to hide the tooltip if an InfoBubble is displayed for example.

map.addListener("mouseout", function(evt) {
document.getElementById("nm_tooltip").style.display ='none';

If the map is draggable, and the tooltip is displayed whilst doing this, the tooltip will also need to move as the map is moved. This can be achieved by re-firing the marker's mouseover event

map.addListener("drag", function(evt) {	 
if (document.getElementById("nm_tooltip").style.display == 'block'){
map.dispatch( new nokia.maps.dom.Event({type: "mouseover", target: map.getObjectAt(evt.displayX, evt.displayY)}));

3) Add a function to move the tooltip to the correct location and add the relevant text.

Further styling is required on the tooltip <div> to move it around the map. The bounding box of a marker can be obtained using the target.getDisplayBoundingBoxl() method and extracting the x and y coordinates. The x co-ordinate is further offset by half of the width of the <div> so that the centre of the tooltip is aligned with the marker. The text is added by setting the innerHTML attribute. Note that it is inefficient to keep traversing the DOM, so a temporary variable is assigned to the DOM node holding the tooltip <div>, to avoid searching for it more than once.

map.addListener("mouseover", function(evt) {
var tooltip = document.getElementById("nm_tooltip");
var target = evt.target;
tooltip.innerHTML = target.$tooltip;
tooltip.style.display ='block';
tooltip.style.left = target.getDisplayBoundingBox(map).getCenter().x - (tooltip.offsetWidth/2);
tooltip.style.top = target.getDisplayBoundingBox(map).bottomRight.y + 1;

4) Define a Marker with a tooltip and add it to the map

Having made all the necessary preparations, a StandardMarker can be added in the usual way. The additional $tooltip attribute will contain the associated tooltip text.

var brandenburgerTorMarker = new nokia.maps.map.StandardMarker(
new nokia.maps.geo.Coordinate(52.516237, 13.377686),
{$tooltip : "Brandenburger Tor"}

Because the tooltip text is displayed within an HTML <div> element, it is also able to accept formatted HTML as shown:

var  fernsehturmTooltip = '<div>' +
'<h2>Tooltip with HTML content</h2>' +
'<img width=120 height=90 src=' +
'"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/' +
'8/84/Berlin-fernsehturm.JPG" ' +
'alt=""/><br/><b>Fernsehturm, Berlin</b>' +
var fernsehturmMarker = new nokia.maps.map.StandardMarker(
new nokia.maps.geo.Coordinate(52.520816, 13.409417),
{$tooltip : fernsehturmTooltip}

Obviously the injected HTML can then be further styled as required.


The result of the Coded Example can be seen below, the cursor is hovering over the marker on the right.


Article Metadata
Code Example
Source file: Tooltip Example
Tested with
Devices(s): Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera
Platform(s): Web Browser
Dependencies: Nokia Maps 2.2.3
Keywords: Nokia Maps, JavaScript, Tooltip, CSS
Created: jasfox (01 Mar 2012)
Last edited: hamishwillee (24 Apr 2013)
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