kml

The KML module for Drupal allows you to view location-enabled data from your site inside of Google Earth, and it's now available for Drupal 6 - the latest release of the Drupal content management platform.

Having realised last week that the Location module for Drupal was already working pretty well on Drupal 6 I set about to update the KML module to start working with it.

It had been a while since I'd done much with the module, and have thankfully had some help from another community member - Robin Rainton, or raintonr - who was keen to add some new features, so it was great to get stuck back into it and try out some of the new things that Robin had added since I last touched the module. Perhaps the biggest new features are the caching of KML feeds so whenever you're accessing them in Google Earth you put less of a strain on your Drupal site (especially if you are using Network Links to regularly update the feed), and the ability to choose the style of the markers instead of using the default pins that we used to have.

So, if you want to use the KML module on your Drupal 6 site, you can now do that. You'll need to download the latest version of Location module and also the latest version of KML module. There will likely still be issues with this early version, so please let me know if you come across any by posting them in the issue queue on drupal.org.

Note: The icon depicted above is a combination of elements from the Druplicon (licensed under the GPL) and the Google Earth icon (used without permission). Hopefully it's not breaching Google's trademark or copyrights or anything...

To set up a KML feed in Drupal all you need to do, after downloading the latest Drupal 5 version of KML module, is create a new view, enable the 'page' display for that view and choose 'KML feed' as the format to display. You can then filter it by anything you wish, sort it in different ways and feed it arguments to filter it down even further on the fly (untested, but should work).

If you want to use that feed as a self-refreshing network link, point the user at http://www.example.com/kml/view/<viewname>/networklink

I haven't had a chance yet to test it all thoroughly but it appears to work just fine. Any feedback and testing appreciated though, as always.

I love finding new sites that use the Drupal KML module, and seeing what they're doing with it. The great thing about it is that it can be used for absolutely anything that has associated location information, so every site out there can be a site about something completely different to the previous one.

The site I discovered today is an Ontario real estate website, listing houses for sale and their locations, but also events and other such things. Not only are they able to add a 'kml' link to each relevant page, allowing the user to click through to Google Earth and see the location, but they are also able to have people find their properties through Google Earth itself.

For a while Google has been indexing KML feeds (ones from Drupal included) and allows their content to be searched in Google Earth. To take an example, there is a $300k townhome in Newmarket, Ontario for which the realtor has added location information to the node in Drupal. Try doing a search for 'townhome in Newmarket' whilst in Google Earth, and you'll see that property show up as the first in the list of web search results.

The KML module can help bring your information to a completely new set of users, or potential customers in the case of the Jasmina Homes site.

How do I know about what sites are using the module? Well, I've started keeping track of of them through the Google Alerts service, monitoring any site that has links with kml/node in them.

I recently discovered the iCommunity.tv localised video news site (via High Earth Orbit) and was especially interested as it was being run on Drupal.

This was one of the first places out on the internet that I'd seen Drupal's KML module being put to good use, for example to be able to view in Google Earth all of the citizen journalist videos from YouTube that are tagged as being from the city you're interested in (e.g. Stuttgart video news and its associated KML feed of Stuttgart video news). Grass roots journalism is only useful to readers if the content is filtered to your needs, if it's in the area you want to know about and it's the type of news that you're looking for. The iCommunity.tv site does that by tagging videos by location (both coordinates and the name of the nearest city) and by topic (politics, community life, arts, etc.) and lets you filter by a combination of those*.

I heard back from Chris Haller of iCommunity.tv after posting a comment on his announcement of the site. He told me that he was previously a Mambo/Joomla user, attracted to Drupal both by its flexibility and by its geo-capabilities. It's great to see that happening, and someone told me exactly the same thing yesterday too. It's also great that organisations like the Open Source Geospatial Foundation are using Drupal as their platform of choice.

Its good to see Drupal becoming more and more of a GeoCMS and people taking the tools and finding ways to apply them in useful and practical ways.

* KML feeds for multiple tags do not currently work in the KML module, as I've just discovered

Over the past few days I've been readying the KML module (thanks to AjK for starting the work) and the GeoRSS module for new releases that will work on the latest, shiny, version of the Drupal content management platform: Drupal 5.0.

They are both now ready (with the exception of some minor bugs and some feature requests) and there are a number of bits I need to backport to the 4.7 version of KML module to ensure it starts working again with recent updates to the Location module. I also need to make sure that GeoRSS module is consuming feeds properly from the successor to Aggregator2, Leech, as well as Feedparser.

I've also been helping out a little with the port of Location module as it is an essential part of getting the two modules to produce their geodata. It's not quite ready to be tagged as being ready for Drupal 5.0 but most of it is already working in this release.

If you're interested in any of these modules, please try them out and report any bugs in their issue trackers. If you have any ideas for future features, please also add them in there. Ideas (and patches, if possible) are always welcomed!