Understanding Google Maps and Places

You will have likely used Google Maps for navigation, but the use of Google Places is not so obvious. This is generally used when you enter an address into a text box, and while you are entering it, there are suggestions for the full address.

Simply put, Google Places is where you find an address, and Google Maps is where you display that address. Many plugins support Google Maps and Places, so when choosing, make sure you look at the pub.dev scores.

A very good Google Maps plugin is google_maps_flutter, which was created by the Flutter development team. In pub.dev, you can click on the author – in this case, flutter.dev –and view all the plugins that the development team has created. Looking through the flutter.dev team’s plugins is a great way to get a feel for all the different plugins available.

There are plugins for Google Places, but an alternative is the google_maps_webservice plugin, which is a wrapper on the...