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I'm looking at thematicmapping.org and see that they have shape data available for download. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be in formats that will go into Google Maps as polygons. The shape data that I'm looking to use is this:

http://www.icgg.org/downloads/2008_cpi_large.kml or http://thematicmapping.org/downloads/TM_WORLD_BORDERS_SIMPL-0.3.zip

They're simplified polygons of the world. How do these get converted to Google-encoded polylines that can be placed onto a Google map? I've been getting frustrated with searches only turning up partial answers and references to dead links. Thanks in advance for any help anyone can offer!

bigmac
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  • I know this isn't what you asked, but you might consider using a KMLLayer instead: http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/layers.html#KMLLayers Drawing those lines on a map isn't going to be nearly as performant as having Google render a clickable raster layer for you. – Mano Marks Jan 11 '12 at 16:19
  • Thanks for the input. Is there a way to dynamically apply colors to the KML shapes after the map has been rendered initially? – bigmac Jan 11 '12 at 17:40
  • You cannot apply colors to the KML via the KmlLayer, however you could upload the KML to Fusion Tables and then use the FusionTablesLayer. You can apply styles to the data in the Fusion Tables UI, or using javascript in the Maps API. – jlivni Jan 11 '12 at 23:21
  • hey have you come up with any solution/alternative yet? because I'm breaking my head on the same thing now, thanks – pythonian29033 Oct 19 '12 at 08:30
  • I ended up just writing my own XML parser to pull the data out. Ugly, but worked – bigmac Oct 19 '12 at 12:33
  • This related question may have your answer: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5387042/best-way-to-overlay-an-esri-shapefile-on-google-maps – yndolok Jun 23 '14 at 16:48

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