Can I view a Google Maps map by bounding latitude and longitude coordinates

Question

With Google Maps I can enter a single lat/lng coordinate and the map is drawn with that lat/lng in the center.

What I'd like to be able to do is enter two coordinate pairs, say the southwest coordinate and the northeast coordinate, and have a Google Map displayed with the appropriate zoom so that the map fills the bounds defined by those coordinates.

Is this possible? If so, how?

Thanks

And the Answer is... Go to Google Maps Code Playground!

Per Taylor's suggestion, I went to the Google Maps Code Playground and entered the following code and was able to get a centered map with the appropriate zoom level bounded by the coordinate pair.

function initialize() {
  var mapDiv = document.getElementById('map-canvas');
  var map = new google.maps.Map(mapDiv, {
    mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.ROADMAP
  });

  var southWest = new google.maps.LatLng(..., ...);
  var northEast = new google.maps.LatLng(..., ...);
  var bounds = new google.maps.LatLngBounds(southWest,northEast);
  map.fitBounds(bounds);
}

​

Answer 1

The function you are looking for is called fitBounds. The fitBounds function takes a LatLngBounds as its parameter. You can read more about that here.

Example code:

var southWest = new google.maps.LatLng(36.90731625763393,-86.51778523864743);
var northEast = new google.maps.LatLng(37.02763411292923,-86.37183015289304);
var bounds = new google.maps.LatLngBounds(southWest,northEast);
myMap.fitBounds(bounds);

Answer 2

Even simpler is embed the link in an Iframe element in a web page. Take the link at the livel zoom you like, framing your area of interest in a nice way. You could try it out on google sites with a free website, then cut and paste the code into your application.