Bing geocoding via Cesium Ion

[hardreddata]

Congratulations to the Terria team with the well earned spin off.

With the Bing Maps API and so forth going end of life I wonder about using Cesium Ion for Bing geocoding. To the best of my knowledge Terria cannot do this presently. I understand the Cesium geocoder is available in Terria. Past experiences would suggest that the Bing one is better.

There is a subtlety here. We've a Bing key and can use Bing services directly but the pricing via Cesium Ion is much more favourable. It would be great if Cesium could be used for the Bing Imagery and Bing Geocoding.

Thinking aloud perhaps this development task could be funded.

Ideas and thoughts are invited.

Thanks.

[zoran995]

Hi @hardreddata, TerriaJS already supports the Cesium ion geocoder. It is actually the default one set in the TerriaMap config and the one used on our demo map. You can configure it as

{
    "flightDurationSeconds": 1.5,
    "id": "search-provider/cesium-ion",
    "minCharacters": 3,
    "name": "translate#viewModels.searchLocations",
    "type": "cesium-ion-search-provider",
    "key": "api-key"
}

Note: key is optional and will fallback to cesiumIonAccessToken if set.

For the Bing Imagery you can set cesiumIonAccessToken and "useCesiumIonBingImagery": true, and it will load Bing base maps through Cesium ion

Edit: I just saw that you are mentioned BingMapsGeocoderService, but I don't see the difference between that and BingMapsSearchProvider implemented in Terriajs. They use the same endpoint. But maybe I misunderstood the question

[hardreddata]

Thanks @zoran995 for the prompt response. I gather you work for Terria now. Nicely done.

Commercially, some might think it is more attractive and convenient to get a Cesium Ion subscription, while supporting open source, rather than deal with Bing enterprise agreements.

In the old Terria v7 I could have local changes in TerriaMap/lib and the map would use that rather than the TerriaJS node package contents.

I suspect we could copy the two files below into TerriaMap/lib/Traits and TerriaMap/lib/Models and modify them for the Cesium Bing Geocoder? And hopefully plumb it all back to config.json

https://github.com/TerriaJS/terriajs/blob/main/lib/Models/SearchProviders/CesiumIonSearchProvider.ts
https://github.com/TerriaJS/terriajs/blob/main/lib/Traits/SearchProviders/CesiumIonSearchProviderTraits.ts

I guess I am asking if we can build this ourselves and avoid using a modified TerriaJS following https://docs.terria.io/guide/contributing/development-environment/

I think this will be quite a common problem after June when they turn off Bing for anyone who isn't paying.

Many thanks.

[hardreddata]

I am assured this will be addressed in #7616

I am happy to see this closed. I will close the ticket if it lets me.

Thanks.