Mapping NextBus locations
Now, we are ready to use this information to create our own map. The best source of freely available street mapping data is the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project: http://www.openstreetmap.org.
OSM also has a publicly available REST API called StaticMapLite to create static map images: http://staticmap.openstreetmap.de.
The OSM StaticMapLite API provides you with a GET API based on Google's static map API to create simple map images with a limited number of point markers and lines. A GET API, as opposed to REST, allows you to append name/value parameter pairs after a question mark on the URL. A REST API makes the parameters part of the URL path. We'll use the API to create our own NextBus API map on demand with a red pushpin icon for the bus location.
In the next example, we have condensed the previous script down to a compact function named nextbus(). The nextbus() function accepts an agency, route, command, and epoch as arguments. The command defaults to vehicleLocations...
