Google Maps API and KML File LocalHost Development Options

Question

The Google Maps JavaScript version 3 API library documentation clearly explains:

The Google Maps API supports the KML and GeoRSS data formats for di

Answer 1

Definitely, Google Maps KmlLayer is designed for you to send your data to them. https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/kml

Have a look the following log.

//console
var src = 'https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/examples/kml/westcampus.kml';

var kmlLayer = new google.maps.KmlLayer(src, {
  suppressInfoWindows: true,
  preserveViewport: false,
  map: your_gmap_object
});

Creating Marker, Polygon, they are all browser side parsing and rendering.

As you can see from next network log, KmlLayer class send source URL to Google Server to parse it and (do something in their end) and send the parsed result back to your browser to render.

//REQUEST from browser

https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js/KmlOverlayService.GetOverlays?1shttps%3A%2F%2Fdevelopers.google.com%2Fmaps%2Fdocumentation%2Fjavascript%2Fexamples%2Fkml%2Fwestcampus.kml&callback=_xdc_._lidt3k&key=AIzaSyBeLTP20qMgxsQFz1mwLlzNuhrS5xD_a_U&token=103685

//RESPONSE from google server

/**/_xdc_._lidt3k && _xdc_._lidt3k( [0,"kml:cXOw0bjKUSmlnTN2l67v0Sai6WfXhSSWuyNaDD0mAzh6xfi2fYnBo78Y2Eg","|ks:;dc:tg;ts:51385071|kv:3|api:3",...
["KmlFile"],[[37.423017,-122.0927],[37.424194,-122.091498]],[["g74cf1503d602f2e5"],["g58e8cf8fd6da8d29"],["ge39d22e72437b02e"]],1,[["client","2"]],-21505,[["ks",";dc:tg;ts:51385071"],["kv","3"],["api","3"]]] )

As @capdragon mentioned above, it would be better parse KML by yourself.

UPDATE

Here is compact KML parser code. This only for google.maps Marker and Polygon.

html

script, I used typescript but it is pretty same with javascript

  file: any
  fileChanged(e) {
    this.file = e.target.files[0]
    this.parseDocument(this.file)
  }
  parseDocument(file) {
    let fileReader = new FileReader()
    fileReader.onload = async (e: any) => {
      let result = await this.extractGoogleCoords(e.target.result)

      //CREATE MARKER OR POLYGON WITH result here
      console.log(result)

    }
    fileReader.readAsText(file)
  }

  async extractGoogleCoords(plainText) {
    let parser = new DOMParser()
    let xmlDoc = parser.parseFromString(plainText, "text/xml")
    let googlePolygons = []
    let googleMarkers = []

    if (xmlDoc.documentElement.nodeName == "kml") {

      for (const item of xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName('Placemark') as any) {
        let placeMarkName = item.getElementsByTagName('name')[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue.trim()
        let polygons = item.getElementsByTagName('Polygon')
        let markers = item.getElementsByTagName('Point')

        /** POLYGONS PARSE **/        
        for (const polygon of polygons) {
          let coords = polygon.getElementsByTagName('coordinates')[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue.trim()
          let points = coords.split(" ")

          let googlePolygonsPaths = []
          for (const point of points) {
            let coord = point.split(",")
            googlePolygonsPaths.push({ lat: +coord[1], lng: +coord[0] })
          }
          googlePolygons.push(googlePolygonsPaths)
        }

        /** MARKER PARSE **/    
        for (const marker of markers) {
          var coords = marker.getElementsByTagName('coordinates')[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue.trim()
          let coord = coords.split(",")
          googleMarkers.push({ lat: +coord[1], lng: +coord[0] })
        }
      }
    } else {
      throw "error while parsing"
    }

    return { markers: googleMarkers, polygons: googlePolygons }

  }

output

markers: Array(3)
0: {lat: 37.42390182131783, lng: -122.0914977709329}
...

polygons: Array(1)
0: Array(88)
0: {lat: -37.79825999283025, lng: 144.9165994157198}
...