The Google Maps JavaScript version 3 API library documentation clearly explains:
The Google Maps API supports the KML
and GeoRSS data formats for displaying
geographic information. These data
formats are displayed on a map using a
KmlLayer object, whose constructor
takes the URL of a publicly accessible
KML or GeoRSS file.
There are even several Stack Overflow questions about how to load local data:
Some of the answers have pointed to third party libraries which can parse KML locally without the file needing to be public:
And while these solutions are good if you have a need to keep your data private, I simply want to make development easier. When running locally I obviously cannot parse my KML and therefore lose functionality that I am trying to test. I've posted a single generic KML file on a publicly available site, but then have to have different development code to render one thing vs. something else when running for real.
What are my options for local development to render what would be publicly available dynamically generated KML files?
Best Answer
It seems like you've outlined the options pretty well:
If you want to work with local data, without involving a publicly accessible webserver, you'll need to use a javascript-based approach to parse the KML and load it onto the map. While this won't perfectly replicate the Google functionality, it is likely good enough for initial development if you only care about displaying the KML features. In this case, I'd probably set up a stub class, like this:
Now either put a switch in the code, or comment/uncomment, or use a build script to switch, or whatever your current process is for switching between dev and production code:
If, on the other hand, you need all of the functionality in the Google
KmlLayer
, or you want to make sure things work with the production setup, or you don't want to bother stubbing out the functionality Google provides, then you'll need to upload it to a publicly available server, so that Google can do its server-side processing.Aside from the obvious options (FTP, a command-line script to upload your new KML file, etc), most of which require you to do something manually before you load your map page, you might consider building the update into the page you're loading. Depending on the platform you're using, this might be easier to do on the back-end or the front-end; the key would be to have a script on your public server that would allow the KML to be updated:
Then, when you view your map page, update the remote KML based on the data from
localhost
. Here's a client-side version, using jQuery:Admittedly, there are a lot of round-trips here (page -> localhost, page -> remote server, Google -> remote server, Google -> page), so this is going to be slow. But it would allow you to have Google's code properly render dynamic KML data produced on localhost, without having to take a separate manual step every time you reload the page.