Mapping Toolbox 3.0

Exporting Vector Point Data to KML

This demo shows ways to structure vector point data and export it to the KML format. KML is an XML dialect used by Google® Earth and Google® Maps browsers.

Contents

Define an Output Directory for the KML Files

This demo creates several KML files and uses the variable kmlDirectory to denote their location. The value used here is determined by the output of the tempdir command, but you could easily customize this.

kmlDirectory = tempdir;

Example 1: Write a Single Point to a KML File as a Placemark

The placemark will include an icon and a description with HTML markup.

Assign the latitude and longitude coordinates for the point.

lat =  42.299827;
lon = -71.350273;

Create a description for the placemark. Include HTML tags in the description to add new lines for the address.

description = sprintf('%s<br>%s</br><br>%s</br>', ..
.
   '3 Apple Hill Drive', 'Natick, MA. 01760', ...
   'http://www.mathworks.com');

Assign iconFilename to a GIF file on the local system's network.

iconDir = fullfile(matlabroot,'toolbox','matlab','icons');
iconFilename = fullfile(iconDir, 'matlabicon.gif');

Assign the name for the placemark.

name = 'The MathWorks, Inc.';

Write the data to the KML file.

filename = fullfile(kmlDirectory, 'The_MathWorks.kml');
kmlwrite(filename, lat, lon, ...
   'Description', description, ...
   'Name', name, ...
   'Icon', iconFilename);

A KML file can be displayed in a Google Earth browser. Google Earth must be installed on the system. On Windows® platforms display the KML file with:

winopen(filename)

For Unix and MAC users, display the KML file with:

cmd = 'googleearth ';
fullfilename = fullfile(pwd, filename);
system([cmd fullfilename])

For this demo, the KML file was previously displayed using Google Earth Pro. The Google Earth image was then saved using the Google Earth "File->Save Image" menu. This is how the data in your KML file looks when loaded into Google Earth:

Optionally, remove the new KML file from your KML output directory. (This demo needs to clean up after itself; in a real application you would probably want to omit this step.)

delete(filename)

Example 2: Write a Point Geostruct to a KML File

Write the locations of major European cities to a KML file, including the names of the cities, and remove the default description table.

Assign the latitude, longitude bounding box.

latlim = [ 30; 75];
lonlim = [-25; 45];

Read the data from the worldcities shapefile.

cities = shaperead('worldcities.shp','UseGeoCoords', true, ...
    'BoundingBox', [lonlim, latlim]);

Write the cities geostruct to a KML file. Assign the name of the placemark to the name of the city. Remove the default description since the geostruct has only one attribute.

filename = fullfile(kmlDirectory, 'European_Cities.kml');
kmlwrite(filename, cities, 'Name', {cities.Name}, 'Description',{}
);

This is how the data in your KML file looks when loaded into Google Earth:

Optionally, remove the new KML file from your KML output directory.

delete(filename)

Example 3: Write a Point Geostruct to a KML File with a Modified Attribute Table

This example displays a placemark at the location of each road segment for an area surrounding Fenway Park in Boston Massachusetts.

Assign a latitude and longitude bounding box.

latlim = [ 42.345589;  42.351322];
lonlim = [-71.099452; -71.08797];

The projection in the GeoTIFF file is in units of survey feet. The point coordinates in the shapefile are in meters. We need to project the bounding box points to units of meters. We can do this by converting the GeoTIFF projection structure to a standard mstruct.

proj = geotiffinfo('boston.tif');
mstruct = geotiff2mstruct(proj);
[x,y] = mfwdtran(mstruct, latlim, lonlim);

Read the road data from the shapefile.

roads = shaperead('boston_roads.shp', 'BoundingBox', [x, y]);

Convert the geometry from 'Line' to 'Point' resulting in a point geostruct with one point associated with each unique street name.

[roads.Geometry] = deal('Point');

Project the points to latitude and longitude coordinates for KML.

[roads.Lat] = deal([]);
[roads.Lon] = deal([]);
for k=1:numel(roads)
    [roads(k).Lat, roads(k).Lon] = ...
        minvtran(mstruct, roads(k).X(1), roads(k).Y(1));
end

Construct an attribute specification.

attribspec = makeattribspec(roads);

Modify the attribute spec to:

attribspec = rmfield(attribspec,'ADMIN_TYPE');
attribspec.STREETNAME.AttributeLabel = '<b>Street Name</b>';
attribspec.RT_NUMBER.AttributeLabel = '<b>Route Number</b>';
attribspec.CLASS.AttributeLabel = '<b>Class</b>';
attribspec.LENGTH.AttributeLabel = '<b>Length</b>';
attribspec.LENGTH.Format = '%.2f meters';

Only write out roads with unique street names to KML.

[U, i] = unique({roads.STREETNAME});
uniqueRoads = roads(i);

Export the road network to a KML file.

filename = fullfile(kmlDirectory, 'Boston_Roads.kml');
kmlwrite(filename, uniqueRoads, ...
    'Description', attribspec, 'Name', {uniqueRoads.STREETNAME})

This is how the data in your KML file looks when loaded into Google Earth:

Compare the Google Earth image with the Boston GeoTIFF image, overlayed with the roads.

Convert the bounding box limits of the roads from meters to survey feet in order to set axes limits.

surveyFeetPerMeter = unitsratio('sf', 'meter');
xLim = surveyFeetPerMeter * x;
yLim = surveyFeetPerMeter * y;

Convert the road coordinates from meters to survey feet in order to overlay the lines on the image.

roadsX = surveyFeetPerMeter*[roads.X];
roadsY = surveyFeetPerMeter*[roads.Y];

Display the Boston GeoTIFF image and overlay the roads on top of the image. The Boston GeoTIFF image includes material (c) GeoEye™, all rights reserved.

figure('Position',[1 1 1600 1040]);
mapshow('boston.tif');
set(gca,'xlim',xLim, 'YLim', yLim)
mapshow(roadsX, roadsY);
axis off

Optionally, remove the new KML file from your KML output directory.

delete(filename)

Example 4: Write Address Data to a KML File

Create a cell array containing addresses for several places of interest in the Boston area.

addresses = { ...
    'Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 02139', ...
    'Massachusetts Institute of Technology', ...
    'Fenway Park, Boston, MA', ...
    'Boston, MA'};

Add a Google Maps icon file to the KML file.

icon = 'http://maps.google.com/mapfiles/kml/paddle/red-circle.png';

Write the data to the KML file.

filename = fullfile(kmlDirectory, 'Places_Of_Interest.kml');
kmlwrite(filename, addresses, ...
    'Name', addresses, ...
    'Icon',icon, ...
    'IconScale',1.5);

This is how the data in your KML file looks when loaded into Google Earth:

Optionally, remove the new KML file from your KML output directory.

delete(filename)

Credits

boston_roads.shp

  Office of Geographic and Environmental Information (MassGIS),
  Commonwealth of Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs
  http://www.state.ma.us/mgis

boston.tif

  Copyright GeoEye
  Includes material copyrighted by GeoEye, all rights reserved. For more
  information, please call 1.703.480.7539 or visit http://www.geoeye.com

  For more information, run:

  >> type boston.txt

Google Earth Images

  The Google Earth images were acquired using Google Earth Pro. For more
  information about Google Earth and Google Earth Pro, visit
  http://earth.google.com/