var sc:ShapeCollection = myMap.getShapeCollections()[0];
sc.removeAll();

the removeAllPois function will just remove them at the view level, they will come back when you zoom in and out.

You can remove individual pois from the collection and they will be removed from the map. Once the poi is added as part of a collection, the poi can not be removed indivually. For example…

private var bc:int = 0;
private function breakIt():void{
var sc:ShapeCollection = myMap.getShapeCollections()[0];
sc.remove(sc.get(bc++)); // remove from collection

var shpC:ShapeCollection = new ShapeCollection();
shpC.add(myMap.getByKey(myPoi.id))
myMap.removeShapeCollection(shpC);

That is said to work, I have not personally tested it yet, but it does seem to work in their code. I would personally like to see the shape remove when I call the removeShape() function. If i want to hide it, I should be able to set the visibility of the item.

http://developer.mapquest.com/Beta

Get it here…

http://developer.mapquest.com/betaAPI/actionscript/MQASFXAPI_5.3.2_RC1.zip

See it in action here…

http://developer.mapquest.com/betaAPI/FX_samples/NALayer/UnitTesterNorthAmericanLayer.html

Glad you’re enjoying the improvements and features in 5.3. We enjoy reading your adventures in app building. Ping us if you need anything.

I really learned a lot from you posts. We are trying to display a ton of custom point, line & polygon data on top of a custom Flex Map builtin useing the AS3 API from Mapquest. We are also looking at the XML route for display of geometry and underlying attribute data. I would love to compare notes, willing to pay you for your time (as long as you are OK with it).

Let me know

thanks

Tom Danaher

714 371 1827

a) Scott – since you are in JS, check out MQLatLngCollection.generalize() to reduce shapepoints for performance. we missed this function out of AS3 5.2 – it will be in 5.3.0 for release

b) recommend you both check out 5.3.0 RC3 at http://developer.mapquest.com/beta
– look for the RemoteCollections – will allow you to loade the polys up from feeds.
– 5.3.0 also includes min/max zoom levels per shape, and also for an entire collection, which will help increase performance.
– 5.3.0 also includes Custom tile Layers, so if the zip codes were pre-rendered as tiles, performance should be great
– take a gander at http://www.mqdemo.com/contractors
Its in AS3 on 5.2 – if thats in any way helpful drop me an email (you both have my addy) and I’ll send you more details on what I did

HTH
Ant

My hope is that, when the user checks the box, that I will be able to capture the edges of the viewable map area, extend it a bit and then request polygons only for that space.

Not sure exactly if that’s possible or how exactly I’ll handle re-querying the polygons when the user is dragging the map around and changing zoom levels, but I will have some handlers for this kind of thing.

My development is with the tiled JavaScript maps, so I need to consider performance even more than you do with Flash. I’ll keep you posted.

By the way, it’d be great to get your contact information so I have a developer I can bounce things off of here and there. If you want to, submit your contact info at http://www.arrowpointe.com/contact, that’d be great. I’ll respond with mine.

Glad to see you blogging about MQ development.