I'm trying to show some data about Australian suburbs. 'Suburb' is the term that Australians use to describe an area, if you are from the rest of the world think post code or something similar.
I'd like to be able to get access to the area boundaries that are already in the map. These are examples of the kind of boundary that I'm talking about:
Marrickville, Sydney (2204): http://goo.gl/maps/QYRhx
Clapton, London (E5): http://goo.gl/maps/3an2Y
I want to be able to draw the boundary on the map, draw multiple boundaries on a map (e.g. show which areas make up the 'inner west'), shade the areas to indicate their vaue of something or other. Generally do stuff with them.
This question asks about how to get boundaries that are drawn manually, but I want to access the ones that already exist.
This question asks a similar question, but it isn't answered.
This question is similar, but the responses suggest using shape files, not getting them directly from Google.
I've also tried the maps styling wizard, and whilst the administrative, neighborhood boundary is what I need to show, it doesn't seem to be able to affect the map.
I've looked in the api docs to no avail. Does anyone know if this is possible?
No, it isn't possible.
The area boundaries feature is not (yet?) implemented in the API.
If you explicitly need data from Google then I can't help you.
But if you just need data on Australian suburbs and don't care where you get it from (and if you happen to be interested in SA or NSW) then you can get GeoJSON or KML for SA from data.sa.gov.au/data/dataset/suburb-boundaries and for NSW from data.gov.au/dataset/nsw-suburb-locality-boundaries-psma-administrative-boundaries.
You might find others at data.gov.au/dataset too, I haven't searched that much.
Related
Does Google Maps(or any other provider[commercial/free]) provides API(s) that can return bounding polygon coordinates of place search? I'm not talking about sw-ne coords only, rather, actual boundary that perfectly defines the shape of a place. Place could be city, or more fine-grained identifiable place?
I don't know much about Google Maps API, but I did give it a fair share of searches and testing out sample codes(from examples provided by Google itself), as well as browsed through API reference, but couldn't find any.
Any help please...
If what you mean is "is it possible to get boundaries of any place returned by Google Places API as we can see in Google Maps ?", the answer is no, you have to use KML files describing the polygon representing the boundaries of the place.
Depending of what you are searching for, it exists a lot of open-data KML files representing some state boundaries, for exemple this file for example.
Please improve your question if you're searching something more specific, it is too broad right now. I didn't downvote, but I guess this why some other people dit it.
I would like to draw a map of current temperatures (or air pressures, etc.) from many weather stations, with the underlying map still recognizable. the problem is easiest to think of as follows:
I have an array of spot measurements from irregularly spaced dots---think triples of GPS coordinates with one temperature value each. my stations can be very close to or very far apart from one another, and a user may want to zoom in or out. cold should be blue, warm should be red. Ideally, I would like to just pass the array, the color range, and have the rest be taken care of. I would prefer everything to be inside a web browser. The user needs to be able to zoom in, zoom out, move around, and get back to his current location.
I do not even know how to think about this problem. If a user has zoomed out enough, non-transparent dots could be so close as to obscure the terrain. However, zooming in, it would be nice to recognize the dot that is the station itself. This presumably requires some intelligence that realizes how many dots there are, e.g., relative to the density of the display? not sure.
I believe google maps charges for many API calls, so I would prefer using an open map and/or open API that can use different underlying maps. It does not have to be fancy. I don't care about directions, etc.---just a map that is recognizable at most zoom settings, with landmark and street names, and my nice temperature station overlay coloring, so that a user can visualize where it is cold and where it is warm.
(Stations come online and offline, but I don't need to update this more than once an hour. I can place the map measurements into a file that is URL web-accessible.)
is this an easy or a hard problem for the high-level web programmer?
/iaw
after looking around for a long time, I think the best way to do this is with html5 openlayers nexrad.
alas, the docs seem to be a mess. half the examples that I found did not seem to work. it's pretty hit-or-miss. similarly, the openlayers cookbook also seems to be outdated and has incorrect examples, but they did have a reasonably short example of such a nexrad map overlaid on the U.S., that one can further study.
I want to use Google Maps or another Map like Openstreetmap to make an interactive site where people can see the stats of crime in their own area... I want to put in these stats by myself via the backend. The front-end must be something like this:
http://www.police.act.gov.au/crime-and-safety/crime-statistics.aspx
Where do I start with this? Is this a polygon? I have read the Google Maps API but I could not find a clue to make something like this. How did they put the stats in it? How can I color the area's and divide them? What did they use? Any direction would be very welcome.
PS: I want to have a detailed map. So no countries or cities, but the area's in a certain city have to be highlighted.
What I can suggest is that first study the developer documentation thoroughly for Google API v3.Basics will help a lot.
For pointers to your needs, you can get help in defining polygons and coloring them at this link https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/overlays#Polygons and also check out the demo examples in the code.
For a 3 point polygon, here is an example https://google-developers.appspot.com/maps/documentation/javascript/examples/polygon-simple
You can define your polygons by adding points around your area. There are many tools available to find your pointer locations like http://martinove.dk/maptools/polytool/
In order to potray data, you can use markerclusterer. These examples can help:
http://google-maps-utility-library-v3.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/markerclusterer/examples/
I want to create an online map for a hiking trail, and I have been using my smartphone to collect coordinates from it.
I have many questions regarding what's good practice when it comes to making such tracks, but for starters: it would look much neater if I could edit the readings so that they are right on top any roads in Google Maps. How can I achieve this?
EDIT: I want to find the coordinates that will make a track along a road look exactly as if I'm using snapping/directions even when I'm not.
I've tried tools such as QLandkarte GT and Viking, and with the latter I was able to manually remove excess coordinates and move the remaining ones so that they're exactly on top of roads (inside Viking, using OpenStreetMap). However when I load the edited .kml-file in Google Maps, the roads seem to be in slightly different places and the result is hardly better than before editing.
I tried using the hack that exports GMaps directions as .gpx, thinking I could insert Google's own coordinates along the roads. But the exported file only had coordinates at the turning points with straight lines between these.
QLandkarte GT supposedly has a snap-to-road feature (see answer in link), but I haven't found it and I also don't know how to obtain a vector map of the area.
Then there's Google Earth which people seem to use for this, but again I can't find any track editing features (in the free version).
In short:
How do I edit my existing tracks so that they match roads in GMaps...
OR
How can I obtain new tracks representing roads in GMaps...
...so that the resulting track is as smooth as Google's own directions or other professional GPS-data, when displayed in GMaps?
It seems like it's possible to get these coordinates from Google Maps after all, exporting the directions polyline. I'm not sure how, it seems to involve adding the parameter output=dragdir to the link.
Anyway there's a tool called GPS Visualizer that can create a .kml-file with the wanted coordinates.
Edit: Will accept my own answer as long as it's the only one, but I would still like to know more.
I need to find the width of roads in Google Maps.
Google Earth can't be used as it doesn't support Linux.
Streetviews cannot be used, since it is not available in the area I live.
This link: http://osdir.com/ml/google-maps-js-api-v3/2011-05/msg00666.html suggests the method of finding the distance between the two ends of the road by knowing the coordinates of both sides.
Therefore the first question is as in title.
BTW, I have managed to display the "route" between the two coordinates already on the maps.
The type of the map can be set to "satellite" view through the API.
Does that affect the distance and coordinates that'll be fetched?
All this stuff about getting points across the street from each other is further complicated by the fact that sometimes the geocode returned will be a ROOFTOP geocode--likely meaning the centroid of a building--and other times, it is RANGE_INTERPOLATED which suggests that it will be not very precise. See http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/reference.html#GeocoderLocationType. In either case, it won't be the edge of the road.
It may be sobering to look just how far from the road Google Maps may put the marker for an address: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=4+Clinton+Drive,+Englishtown,+NJ&aq=&sll=40.299985,-74.290066&sspn=0.009426,0.015213&gl=us&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=4+Clinton+Dr,+Englishtown,+New+Jersey+07726&t=h&z=16
In short, unless your use case can tolerate a pretty wide error bar, I think it's safe to say that this just isn't going to work, at least not without considerable resources at your disposal.
Google Earth web plug-in is not available for Linux, but if you don't need it to be a web page, then you can try working with Google Earth app, perhaps. It works on Linux.
If your use case is for a reasonably narrow geographical area, there may be data available elsewhere. But getting this from Google Maps API v3 is unlikely to be a very good option.
(As always when I give a "I don't think this is feasible" answer, I'd be happy for someone to come along and prove me wrong.)
I'd look at the coordinates of individual houses. If house numbers are arranged such that n+1 is on another side than n, the distance between the two might tell you something about the width. But I don't think there's an API for that...
Here's the NON API solution i thought of,
In my country , roads named with different code names like "A3" , "B354", "C6".
"A" is for main roads. Most of the time width of the road is consistent as per road code. Therefore we can use road code to get the width of the road. I don't know if this works for your country.