Best way to overlay an ESRI shapefile on google maps?

google-maps google-maps-api-3 gis kml shapefile
Carsen picture Carsen · Mar 22, 2011 · Viewed 113.7k times · Source

What is the best way to overlay a shapefile in Google Maps?

After some reading suggests that, converting shapefile into KML and overlaying KML in Google map is an option. If that is the case, how do I convert a shapefile into KMLs?

I believe there would be a few open source tools available for this conversion. Can anyone point to a tool to covert a shapefile to KML without any loss of data?

Answer

Aaron Kreider picture Aaron Kreider · Jul 22, 2011

I like using (open source and gui friendly) Quantum GIS to convert the shapefile to kml.

Google Maps API supports only a subset of the KML standard. One limitation is file size.

To reduce your file size, you can Quantum GIS's "simplify geometries" function. This "smooths" polygons.

Then you can select your layer and do a "save as kml" on it.

If you need to process a bunch of files, the process can be batched with Quantum GIS's ogr2ogr command from osgeo4w shell.

Finally, I recommend zipping your kml (with your favorite compression program) for reduced file size and saving it as kmz.

Related questions

Scaling marker size with marker icons from a sprite in Google Maps API v3

I'm playing with the Google Maps API (v3) and I've run into an issue with marker icons. I'm trying to vary the size of my markers depending on their individual data attributes. The icons themselves are in a sprite that …

Read More
I need to make a clean, nice-looking map for a presentation based on a Google map. Any easy way to do this?

I want to make a very clean map that only shows relevant information - e.g., only the streets that matter. I was going to just draw a map while looking at Google's, but that turned out to be very …

Read More
Google Maps JS API v3 - Simple Multiple Marker Example

Fairly new to the Google Maps Api. I've got an array of data that I want to cycle through and plot on a map. Seems fairly simple, but all the multi-marker tutorials I have found are quite complex. Let's use …

Read More