The Yahoo! Maps Developer APIs

Select from among our comprehensive set of Maps APIs to make your web site or application come alive with the rich content and dynamic user interaction of Yahoo! Maps. Integrate a store locator with a few lines of code, view highway traffic patterns, or create custom routes  — whatever you can dream of,Yahoo! Maps Web Services make it easy to build Yahoo! Maps based applications. Yahoo! Maps' built-in Geocoder enables you to specify an address or latitude/longitude coordinates: no need to call an additional service or write special code.

• Yahoo! Maps Simple API

  Lets you easily overlay your map data using the Yahoo! Maps web site to display your maps. No programming is necessary.

• Yahoo! Maps Flash APIs

  Embed maps in your web site or application using the free Macromedia Flash player for a rich user experience.

  AS-Flash API - Create a Flash application that displays Yahoo! Maps using ActionScript®.

  JS-Flash API - Create great applications quickly with our scriptable Flash maps and JavaScript™. No Flash programming is required!

  Flex™ API - Flex developers can use the Flex API with Macromedia's Presentation Server Technology to create powerful applications.

• Yahoo! Maps AJAX API

  Use the power of DHTML and JavaScript to host your own maps. We provide the JavaScript functions to make map-making a breeze.

• Map Image API

  If you just want to programmatically fetch a map image, use the Map Image API. You can stitch tiles together to build your own static Yahoo! Maps map images using our Geocoding API to transform physical addresses into encoded latitude-longitude (geocoded) responses.

Overview of Using the Yahoo! Maps APIs

At the lowest level, each Yahoo! Maps API works the same way. Using REST, you can plot points on a map with features like custom descriptions, URLs, labels, groups, icons and more. Your data inputs need to be formatted in Web-standard RSS format with either longitude/latitude or address information, as you like. All Yahoo! Maps APIs can take actual address information and process the geocoding for you. No more messing with preprocessing to generate XML already encoded with latitude/longitude!

To get started, first select the API that's right for you. Pick from the following options, as they offer different functionality and ease of use.

• By programming language: no programming, JavaScript for Flash, ActionScript for Flash, AJAX or simple REST.
• By user experience: display your data directly on the Yahoo! Maps site or embed A Yahoo! Map in your in your web page or application via Flash, AJAX, or simply display a static Map Image.

Next, some of the other Yahoo! Web Services we provide like our Traffic APIs, Local Search APIs and other Mashup data sources to help you get access to info and content to enhance your Yahoo! Maps application.

Get more ideas from our application gallery, featuring working examples that you can use as a starting point for your own applications.

Rate Limit

The Yahoo! Maps Simple API that displays your map data on the Yahoo! Maps site has no rate limit and no usage restrictions.

The Yahoo! Maps Embeddable APIs (the Flash and AJAX APIs) are limited to 50,000 queries per IP per day.

The Map Image API is limited to 50,000 queries per IP per day. The Geocoding API is limited to 5,000 queries per IP per day.

Terms of Use

Use of the Yahoo! Maps APIs is governed by the Yahoo! Maps APIs Terms of Use and the Yahoo! Maps Terms of Use. These Terms of Use supplant the general Yahoo! Developer Network Terms of Use. See also the Usage Policy for more information about acceptable usage of these APIs or to request additional queries.