Route using navigation point tokens

European Economic Area (EEA) developers

Navigation point tokens allow you to send key contextual information about a destination to the Navigation SDK for Android for improved routing and driver experience. This is useful in cases like food delivery or rideshare, where the pickup or dropoff point may be ambiguous without user input.

This image shows examples of a consumer rideshare app where the navigation point is selected, and a driver app using the Navigation SDK for Android to precisely route the driver.

Examples of consumer and driver apps

To create and pass a navigation point token, use the Destinations endpoint of the Geocoding API to allow your users to select a preferred location from a list of navigation points. The user's selection becomes a navigation point returned by the Destinations endpoint of the Geocoding API. You can then pass the navigation point token, which contains both the destination coordinates as well as contextual information, to the Navigation SDK for Android, where a waypoint is created for precise routing. The destination will be highlighted for the driver by the Navigation SDK based on the Place the token is associated with.

How a navigation point token is created and sent to the Nav SDK for routing

For example, imagine a rideshare use case, where there is an app for the consumer to book the ride, and a second app for the driver to receive notification of the ride and routing information to the destination.

When a consumer opens the consumer app, the app calls the Destinations endpoint of the Geocoding API and provides the consumer with a selection of potential navigation points:

Consumer choosing a drop off point

The user chooses their preferred point, which is one in the array of navigationPoints in the response body of a SearchDestinations request:

"navigationPoints": [
    {
      "navigationPointToken": <encoded navigation point token>,
      "displayName": "South Entrance",
      "travelModes": ["DRIVE"],
      "usages": ["PICKUP","DROPOFF"],
      "location": {
        "lat": 37.3940894,
        "lng": -122.0788389
      }
      }
    }
]

The navigation point token from the response is passed to a mobile driver app that uses the Navigation SDK for Android to create a Waypoint to route the driver to the correct pickup point.