Does the Android API support KML files?

benstpierre picture benstpierre · Mar 15, 2010 · Viewed 7.4k times · Source

Is there a way in Android to load KML files from Google Earth into a map widget?

Specifically I am looking to load saved shapes created in Google Earth overtop a map widget as easily as possible. Has anybody ever tried this before?

Answer

Willem Leuverink picture Willem Leuverink · Dec 7, 2015

It is an old question but this answer might be of some use if someone happens to stumble upon it.

Do you mean to add the kml file onto a mapfragment inside an app programmatically? If so, you can use this method.

 private void loadKml(File file) {

    try( InputStream inputstream = new FileInputStream(file) ) {

        // Set kmllayer to map
        // map is a GoogleMap, context is the Activity Context

        KmlLayer layer = new KmlLayer(map, inputstream, context);

        layer.addLayerToMap();



    // Handle these errors

    } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {

        e.printStackTrace();

    } catch (IOException e) {

        e.printStackTrace();

    } catch (XmlPullParserException e) {

        e.printStackTrace();
    }

}

The downside is that you have little to no control as to how the kml layer is displayed. You can find a complete reference here: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/android-api/utility/kml

You can also try to parse the kml file to a POJO using JAK and JAXB and draw that data programmatically. If you can get it to work it is relatively painless. https://labs.micromata.de/projects/jak.html