CODEWITHSUNDEEP
google-mapskml
wesley.fok
wesley.fok

Reputation: 173

Custom icons in KML occasionally break in Google Maps

So this might be a bit tricky to demonstrate, since the problem only appears occasionally and unpredictably--hopefully the problem shows up when you view this question (or, alternatively, has stopped appearing altogether!).

We have a Google Maps implementation on our site that displays paginated search results on a map. The current page's results appear as regular Google Maps markers (with custom icons--these work fine), but the other search results appear as smaller markers in a KML layer. An example:

http://www.redflagdeals.com/in/verdun/map/

The large markers are squarish pin images; the small markers are coloured dots. Blue and purple markers/dots simply refer to different types of content. In the KML file, we've specified two Styles, one for each content type. Other than the Icon reference, which points to the different pin images, the two elements are exactly the same. Here's an example generated KML file for reference:

http://www.redflagdeals.com/in/verdun/map/?do=map_kml&longitude=-73.56895400000002&latitude=45.457064&order=deal_price&dir=asc&category_filter=0&content_filter=0&tag_filter=0&keyword=&page=1&show=deal%20coupon

Most of the time, our map shows the large and small markers perfectly. Occasionally, though, some or all of the small pins show up without the custom icons, instead reverting to the generic blue Google marker image. Today, the custom minipins that show up in blue are broken, while the purple ones are all fine. Other times, both the blue and purple ones are broken.

The problem usually fixes itself, leaving us clueless as to the cause or the solution. The only theory I have is that we use a CDN to host our marker images, and occasionally we push a new version to the CDN while updating all the filenames simultaneously (as we have CDN version numbers in the URLs for our images). Maybe it's possible Google is requesting one or both of the small pin images right when we're pushing a new CDN version, getting a 404, and giving up immediately. But that would mean Google caches the KML images (or lack thereof) for quite a long time. Other than that, I have no ideas.

Is there anything we can do to prevent this problem from cropping up in the future?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1748

Answers (2)

Michal
Michal

Reputation: 13649

see this post (Comment #4 specifically) explains caching of custom markers http://code.google.com/p/gmaps-api-issues/issues/detail?id=3864

Upvotes: 1

Dr.Molle
Dr.Molle

Reputation: 117364

I've just tested this, the result is the following:

I'm sure Google caches both, the KML-file and the marker-images. (Of course they do, otherwise they must load the files and create new tiles on every single request )

So when you change any marker-image, you must change the URLs of the marker-images inside the KML-file.

You also must change the URL of the KML-file inside your application(otherwise google will not recognize the modified image-URL's)

It's sufficient to append a random parameter to the URLs

Upvotes: 1

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