Using GoogleMaps Tile instead of default folium map tiles

[SumeetSandhu]

Describe the bug
A clear and concise description of what the bug is.

To Reproduce

googlePlex = ( 37.423199 , -122.084068 )
z,x,y = 10, 164, 397

map1 = folium.Map(tiles='https://mt1.google.com/vt/lyrs=r&x='+str(x)+'&y='+str(y)+'&z='+str(z), attr='GoogleMap')
map1

map2 = folium.Map(tiles='https://tile.googleapis.com/v1/2dtiles/'+str(z)+'/'+str(x)+'/'+str(y)+'?session='+GMAPS_SESSION_KEY+'&key='+GMAPS_API_KEY,attr='GoogleMap')
map2

Expected behavior
Map1 shouldn't work at all without credentials but it does open something weird - a grid of copies of the desired tile's thumbnail. Probably a google authentication error? The tiles are of the newer upcoming style.

Map2 gives the same error - a grid of copies of the desired tile's thumbnail. The tiles are of the current, older style.
This is likely a folium error?

Environment (please complete the following information):

• Browser = chrome
• Jupyter Notebook
• Python version = sys.version_info(major=3, minor=11, micro=7, releaselevel='final', serial=0)
• folium version 0.19.4
• branca version 0.6.0
• Google Maps API to create map 2 - you need to use your own GMAPS_API_KEY and GMAPS_SESSION_KEY (see https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/tile/2d-tiles-overview)

Additional context
Add any other context about the problem here.

Possible solutions
List any solutions you may have come up with.

folium is maintained by volunteers. Can you help making a fix for this issue?

[Conengmo]

Not sure what you are talking about really, and I don't have an API key so I can't verify. Are you sure the url you use is correct? You are likely not supposed to put those numbers into the url. Instead it should look something like this: https://tile.googleapis.com/v1/2dtiles/{z}/{x}/{y}.png?key=YOUR_API_KEY. Note how z, x and y are not replaced with numbers in the url, as this is actually a template url.

If there is an issue here, it's likely in somewhere between Leaflet and the Google API. Not much we can do in Folium.

[SumeetSandhu]

I guess the question then becomes - are Leaflet plugins supported by Folium? I see a lot of Google Maps related plugins at https://leafletjs.com/plugins.html such as https://gitlab.com/IvanSanchez/Leaflet.GridLayer.GoogleMutant.

Also, Google returns one tile at a time - which means we have to fetch a lot of high resolution X-Y tiles to compose the map for a given location at a given Zoom.

[hansthen]

@SumeetSandhu,

I agree with @Conengmo that there are a few issues in the code sample you sent us. You might want to try the following first: You should not hardcode the x, y and z values in the tile url. They should be literal "x={x}" etc. Leaflet itself will replace these template strings with the appropriate values for the tile. This should solve your repeating tiles in a grid issue.

The other issue (the older style tiles) is highly unlikely to be Folium related. Folium is just a thin wrapper around Leaflet. As stated, we just pass a url string to Leaflet to tell it where to fetch the tiles. I know this is a hard ask, but for issues like this, I want to see a working example in pure Leaflet before accepting this as a Folium issue.

[SumeetSandhu]

Thank you @Conengmo and @hansthen - the following worked

• https://tile.googleapis.com/v1/2dtiles/{z}/{x}/{y}?session=GMAPS_SESSION_KEY&key=GMAPS_API_KEY
• https://mt1.google.com/vt/lyrs=r&x={x}&y={y}&z={z}

It would be great to add them to official documentation because there are many versions floating around on random youtube videos :)

[Conengmo]

Good to hear it worked! And thanks for the suggestion, I opened a PR to expand our documentation on this topic a little bit.