android - how to get wifi hotspot's location?

Question

I want to write an application that it can record the wifi hotspot's location we are accessing and display them in map. But the problem is - how do I get wifi hotspot's location? I think I can use the wifi signal to get the wifi hotspot's location, but it may not be very accuracy at first time. And if there is no other solution, I could record the location of GPS when access wifi hotspot at the first time.

Answer 1

You'll not be able to find the hotspots location and you'll not be able to determine the direction and distance from your current position to the actual hotspot.

The hotspots don't report their coordinates (my wifi box doesn't even know it's own geographical coordinates). Google captured hotspots during their streetview missions and used the results to triangulate the positions of wifi hotspots and other companies did the same to build up databases.

So to get the information, you'll need access to a database that knows the coordinates of hotspots.