Custom Maps in iPad App

Question

I just want to build a drill down map like this - Drill Down Map Here I want to show some data on tapping of each regions.I am out of clue. How can I ? What should I use ? From where to start ?

EDIT : In the link it's showing the country name on mouse over, instead of that I want to show some data/info of the country on touch. Please visit the map shown in the link,you'll get the whole idea.

Thanks !!

Answer 1

If you want total control on the map layout, and be able to check which country the users taps, there's no secret : you need to have boundaries of all countries you want to detect.
Here's the global approach I would use to reimplement something that looks like the map you linked to (I can you into more details if you want, but at first, here's the global approach) :

• Get the data of the boundaries of the countries you need. This can be done using OpenStreetMap.org data. [EDIT] I just came accross this website to download countries boundaries as files you can then use with tilemill : http://www.gadm.org/country
• Use this data with tilemill (http://mapbox.com/tilemill/) : this tool is able to design maps using a language that looks like CSS but dedicated for maps. The results is great and the tool great as well. This tool also support shapes files, so if you can get the countries boundaries as shapefiles, you'll be able to use them with tilemill, and this will be easier than using .osm files from open street map). Have a look here http://mapbox.com/tilemill/data/ for the supported formats.
• Then, with tilemill, export your map as an MBTile file (this file contains all tiles needed to get the map rendered at different zoom levels).
• Use the route-me project to display the resulting MBTile file (in its latest version, route-me is able to do that, this feature has been implemented by the mapbox team to support their open format MBTile).

Guys from Mapbox have published a good tutorial "from data to maps" here : http://mapbox.com/demo/making_massredistrict/ this may help as well