Display Static Google Maps in a Java Desktop Application

Displaying static Google Maps in a Java desktop application sounds complicated, since iGoogle Maps provide a JavaScript API that can be exploited from web pages based on a Google key per host. Besides this API, Google Maps also provides a URL based API for extracting static Google Maps directly into desktop application, without requiring JavaScript or access keys. This API is explained very well here: http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/staticmaps/index.html.

Based on this tutorial, Java can extract and save a Google Maps static map in just a few lines of code, without any high complexity involved. Even though the API is very simple, it took me a while to get to this API, so I will share my code here:

try {
    BufferedImage img = ImageIO.read(new URL("http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/
    api/staticmap?sensor=false&size=512x512¢er=Brooklyn&zoom=12&style=feature:
    road.local%7Celement:geometry%7Chue:0x00ff00%7 Csaturation:100&style=feature:  
    landscape%7Celement:geometry%7Clightness:-100"));
    
    File outputfile = new File("map.png");
    ImageIO.write(img, "png", outputfile);
    System.out.println("Saved!");
    } catch (Exception ex) {
         System.out.println("Error!" + ex);
    }

From http://e-blog-java.blogspot.com/2011/12/display-static-google-maps-in-java.html