How to extract and use*.osm.bz2 file for Android?

Question

I have downloaded the file philippines.osm.bz2 from a site. Now I don't know what to do next with this file. I mean what are the software that I should need to use this file? My plan is to display a Map of the philippines from OSM file like philippines.osm.bz2 and display it on an Android project offline.

Are there any libraries that I can use to be able to combine .osm map files and merge it to Android. Please help me.

Answer 1

.osm files are way too large for using them directly on a Smartphone/Tablet.

For a quick start I suggest you to use MapDroyd which has a built in download functionality for regions world wide. The downloaded data has been derived from .osm files but they are optimized and reduced for mobile usage.

A different approach is the MapsForge vector file format which is supported by some Apps like Locus .

Unfortunately ready-to-use maps are at the moment only available for Europe: ftp://ftp.mapsforge.org/maps/

For building your own app I would definitely take a closer look onto the MapsForge project. In includes a renderer that draws a map based on the vector information stored in the .map files. AFAIR those files can be created by converting .osm/.pbf files on a regular PC.

Answer 2

OSM files are OpenStreetMap files. There are various Android projects that can read OSM files. This one seems to be the most developed one: http://code.google.com/p/osmdroid/