I am trying to export the layers (land, street, street names) separately from either google maps, openstreetmap.org, maperitive.net (or if you have a better recommendation).
The end goal is to have a custom marked up map but I need to make sure the land is the same and most of the roads line up. Any recommendations out there?
You'll need to get the raw XML data from OpenStreetMap for your area. For anything other than a tiny area, this might be a huge file. There's an API for this but you don't mention a language but I know there's bindings to Python and R.
Once you've done that, extract the bits you want according to the OSM data definition - basically you select XML elements by attribute tags using whatever XML parser is included in whatever language you are using.
Then you'll have a vector data set which you need to render as a map. For that you can use Mapnik, which is what OpenStreetMap use to put labels in the right place, draw good-looking lines etc etc.
This is all pretty hard work. Maybe you could just use some maps from an existing provider? It sounds like you want something simple - have you tried Stamen.com's 'Toner' map?
http://maps.stamen.com/toner/#12/37.7619/-122.3930
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First of all, I'd like to explain what I want to achieve.
Imagine that I own a leaflet drop business. I cover a city, which is divided into 10 sections.
I want to leaflet-drop those 10 sections systematically, and have a heatmap that shows when they were last done (ie, if an area was done just last week, it would show up as green, but if it was done 6 months ago, it would be red.)
However, occasionally, I would do additional leaflet drops within the area, that I wouldn't want to be included in the data above - these would then show up on the heatmap in, say, blue.
I've been looking at OpenLayers, and it seems like it can do what I want - but I'm not really that technical, so need advice. OpenLayers has the ability to select specific areas with a polygon tool, which is exactly what I need - but how can I input this data, which will change frequently?
I currently monitor coverage of the territories with an Excel spreadsheet, but would like this heatmap system in addition to that.
So - any ideas?
Heck, for a tool for you to use yourself, you could use a drawing package like Inkscape. Scan a map of the area, paste that in, draw polygons for the areas you care about, and then every time you do a drop, change the colour of the polygon.
OpenLayers is generally used by software developers to aggregate geospatial/map data from various sources into web applications used by many users. OpenLayers can do what you want but not without writing a fair amount of JavaScript code. You might be looking more for a tool like ESRI's ArcCatalog, although it is probably too powerful for your needs.
I did a quick google search of "best map drawing tools" and found SmartDraw, for example. I have no affiliation with SmartDraw, nor do I know if it's any good, but it seems like this type of software would be more suited to your needs.
For what you say would be more useful a desktop tool as e.g. http://www.qgis.org/ (is open source and free)
I have some rutes in KML format and I can't modify them. I want to draw them on a map but I also want to get the fist and last points to check for near cities and interesting places.
The problem that Google Maps API does server-side procesing and I cannot access individual elements form it. I searched and tried to use a parser like GeoXML but it's not exactly what I want because it uses its own map style an so on and I have to use Google API maps. I only do need to acces certain elements of KML tree and i will draw them using Google Maps API.
Can anyone help please? Thanks in advance for answer in these vacation days(for some).
You can use the standard KmlLayer in Google Maps for rendering, and then use a 3rd party library like GeoXML (or your own code to read the XML) to grab whatever data you need from the KML and run additional functions based on that.
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i'm trying to desing a new application which allow user see he/her current location on a custom map (office, university compus, etc). but actually i have a couple of question in my mind (i haven't designed this kind of application before). i'm wondering:
How can i draw my own maps, what is the best option for it? there any format that i have to care of, there are any specification about it ?
Once i have my custom map. how can i do to mapping a global position system with the local positions ?
What are the tricks behing zoom on maps ? just differents layers with more or less informations and those layers changes on users demand ?
If a whant to mark some specific points over the map, like a cafeteria, boss's office etc, how can i do that ?
Sorry if my questions are too much generics and dumb, but i really need some clues about this topic because i don't have any idea how to design this kind of application as best as possible. and we don't whant to reinvent the wheel.
I will appreciate any help that you can provide me in order to desing this application
There are a number of approaches you can take to creating a maps application. Which one you use depends on the set of features you want to support, and the degree of control you want to maintain over the product.
If you want something like an embedded google map, then clearly the JavaScript Google Maps API may be best solution. If you need to support further features from the server side, like directions, you can make use of the web services api:
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/webservices/index.html
If, on the other hand, you essentially need a zoomable map of an area that you can define with markers and borders drawn from your database, and you want complete custom control over this image without having to rely on Google Maps' data or branding, then you can fairly easily build a scalable image either on the client or server, or both.
To start, you will need a set of point coordinates from which to draw your map. These can be derived from the SVG generated by a program like Adobe Illustrator when you draw vector graphics. Thus you could draw your own map in Illustrator and use the generated svg to create your map. In this case you will have to read about SVG and understand how to use it. Raphael.js is an excellent library that offers cross-browser compatible handling of SVG. If your map is of a familiar region, such as a country, you may be able to find SVG coordinates for it already on the web. You could start by grabbing a subset of the data in this file on wikipedia for the country or region you want to map.
Once you have a set of coordinates that define your map areas, you can keep them in a config file that can be read into memory from disk by your application as needed. It's convenient to save this data in the form of a hash, where each set of key-value pairs stores a separate svg 'path', or set of point coordinates that forms a closed shape. These could represent, for instance, the counties in a state.
Once you have the appropriate 'paths' stored in this manner, it is relatively easy to write a wide variety of software implementations.
Check out the imagemagick convert
documentation for the -draw
option for an example of how to
draw a png, jpeg, or gif on your
server from your stored svg paths.
Adam Hooper has some brilliant ideas of what to do with a custom map using SVG on the client side:
http://adamhooper.com/eng/articles/9
Note that you do not necessarily
need to use SVG. Here's an
example of a map drawn on the
server using ImageMagick, with a
highlightable clickmap drawn over it
by the browser, where the
highlighting is handled by the
jquery maphighlight plugin, which
uses the canvas element where it is
supported and VML in its place on
Internet Explorer browsers. All of
these layers (ImageMagick,
client-side click-map, and
client-side javascript highlighting)
are built with straight lines drawn
between point coordinates, so none
of this is actually SVG, and may be
easier to understand. Have a look
at the page source to see how the
click map is drawn, then look at the
maphighlight plugin to understand
what's going on:
http://davidlynch.org/js/maphilight/docs/
A third option, if you need to support more google-maps-like features, but want to add your own map data without using an overlay, is to implement some application of Open Street Maps. If you go to openstreetmap.org, find the area you want to customize, and click the edit tab at the top, you can edit the map as needed for your area. This edits the map data for all users of the Open Street Map service. Then you can get the openlayers javascript from http://openlayers.org/ to render a map on your website from Open Street Maps data that you can freely edit yourself. Also see the OpenStreetMap Wiki that tells you more about the OpenStreetMap movement.
If you don't want to reinvent the wheel, then don't try do do it: take the Google Maps API, add some markers and you're done. Zooming included. They have examples to guide you and there's loads of knowledge about the usage.
All you need is a free API key.
Edit: Your comment in the original question indicates that you want to use a custom overlay over existing maps. That's also possible as this example shows (see docs for custom overlays).
In the effort to not reinvent the wheel (which is definitely a good idea), much of the work of the maps themselves has already been done. The simplest approach will be to integrate Google Maps into your application. To address your individual points:
You don't have to draw your own maps. Tons of them already exist. Unless you're asking about drawing maps of indoor facilities yourself and plotting on those? In which case, how do you plan to approach this from a hardware perspective? GPS won't work well.
You need a piece of hardware that supplies the GPS coordinates. From there, you can just call the API to plot it.
Already done.
Calls to the API. Just provide the location (address, GPS, whatever you have) to the API. GPS will be more accurate, of course. But I'm pretty sure there's a geolocation service as part of the API and you can store the coordinates locally and adjust them manually if they're inaccurate.
If I'm off-base from your actual idea here, let me know. "Maps" is, of course, vague.
I want to have a vector layer of the world, which shows the country borders, states and their names in English. Is there a layer that exists that I can control the colours?
Cloudmade doesn't let me quite do this, nor does openstreetmap and a bunch of others. I'm thinking I might need to create a raster image and overlay that except I dont know where to get an accurate EPS/vector map I can edit and overlay.
Running out of options!
You have different options depending of your needs:
The easiest one is to use a public
WMS service that offers the
information you need. You can check
catalogues like this one or a
Google search like this. If
your are lucky to find a service
that suits you, just add it as a WMS
layer in OpenLayers as described in
this example.
If you can't find a public service, you will have to serve the
geographic data yourself. You have
to find a dataset of the world
countries (the most common formats
are ESRI shapefile and KML).
If you find a shapefile (try here), you will
have to serve it via a map server like
MapServer or Geoserver.
Both are pretty straightforward to
set up, but choose the one that suits you best (MapServer is a CGI and Geoserver is Java-based). Once you have configured a WMS service with the countries data, you can add it to your OpenLayers app following the previous example.
If you can't or don't want to use a map server and you have a KML file of the world countries, you can also add a vector layer to OpenLayers from a KML file, as described in this example. Be careful, because all geometries will be rendered in the user's browser (with SVG or VML) and for large datasets, this can be a performance issue. Check this example to see it in action.
I hope this give you a few clues.
I've got a request to implement a visualization service for geographical related data.
I have a list of Italian ZIP Codes (they are called CAP in Italian). I've already found a table which maps these ZIP codes to geographical coordinates (lat/long).
So, the data I have to visualize as map is structured the following way:
ZIPcode Latitude Longitude RequestCount
------- -------- --------- ------------
Is there an easy way (using a web service or implementing it myself using a component - preferably in .NET) for creating a map chart similar to the image i inserted below? It needn't to be that pretty and not necessarily geo-political.
I just need a indicator for every point which shows a smaller or bigger circle and next to it the value of RequestCount. I think this could be done either using the coordinates or, if there is some service which maps the Italian ZIP codes, using the ZIP code.
Thank you in advance!
alt text http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/3814/carsalesuh6.png
GeoNames offers a data set and open source libraries for geo mapping
Take a look at .net Charting and Chart FX Maps (I've never used these before).
Maybe...
Use the Google Map API. You can't draw circle overlays, but you can draw polygons. Here's the API for drawing polygons. An 8-sided polygon already looks pretty circle like. You could experiment with more sides to see how that looks.
Here's the API reference for the Google GPolygon class:
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/reference.html#GPolygon
I've used MapServer for many projects and it works well and is very flexible. Haven't tried the .NET bindings though:
http://www.paolocorti.net/2006/09/20/mapserver-tutorial-for-c-mapscript-asp-net/
I've used Fusion Maps for things like this. It is flash based with a javascript API. You can easily feed it either a static XML file to start, but I've also built various webservices to give it dynamic capabilities. There are many options to change the look and feel of the map as well.
take a look at Mapv - a library of geography visualization
enter image description here