Google Maps V3: Draw German State Polygons?

I need to draw colored polygons over certain German states. What's the best way (or easiest, fastest, any really...) to do this? Do I need to somehow get all the outlines as lat/lon points and draw a polygon based on those? Or is there a better way?


You want to do something like this? http://www.geocodezip.com/geoxml3_test/v3_FusionTables_query_sidebarF_local.html?country=Germany

It uses publicly available data in FusionTables, the Natural Earth Data set.

 encrypted ID:
 https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=19lLpgsKdJRHL2O4fNmJ406ri9JtpIIk8a-AchA
 numeric ID:
 https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?dsrcid=420419

You can style them (color them) as you like.

code snippet:

// globals
var map = null;
var infoWindow = null;
var geoXml = null;
var geoXmlDoc = null;
var myLatLng = null;
var myOptions = null;
var mapCenter = null;
var geocodeTheCountry = true;
var gpolygons = [];

// Fusion Table data ID
var FT_TableID = "19lLpgsKdJRHL2O4fNmJ406ri9JtpIIk8a-AchA"; // 420419;
var CountryName = "Germany";
google.load('visualization', '1', {
  'packages': ['corechart', 'table', 'geomap']
});

function createSidebar() {
  // set the query using the parameters
  var FT_Query2 = "SELECT 'name_0', 'name_1', 'kml_4326' FROM " + FT_TableID + " WHERE name_0 = '" + CountryName + "' ORDER by 'name_1'";
  var queryText = encodeURIComponent(FT_Query2);
  // alert("createSidebar query="+FT_Query2);
  var query = new google.visualization.Query('http://www.google.com/fusiontables/gvizdata?tq=' + queryText);

  //set the callback function
  query.send(getData);
}

// Set a callback to run when the Google Visualization API is loaded.
google.setOnLoadCallback(createSidebar);

var FTresponse = null;

myLatLng = new google.maps.LatLng(37.422104808, -122.0838851);
// these set the initial center, zoom and maptype for the map 
// if it is not specified in the query string
var lat = 37.422104808;
var lng = -122.0838851;
var zoom = 18;
var maptype = google.maps.MapTypeId.ROADMAP;
if (!isNaN(lat) && !isNaN(lng)) {
  myLatLng = new google.maps.LatLng(lat, lng);
}
infoWindow = new google.maps.InfoWindow();
//define callback function, this is called when the results are returned
function getData(response) {
  if (!response) {
    alert('no response');
    return;
  }
  if (response.isError()) {
    alert('Error in query: ' + response.getMessage() + ' ' + response.getDetailedMessage());
    return;
  }
  FTresponse = response;
  //for more information on the response object, see the documentation
  //http://code.google.com/apis/visualization/documentation/reference.html#QueryResponse
  numRows = response.getDataTable().getNumberOfRows();
  numCols = response.getDataTable().getNumberOfColumns();

  fusiontabledata = "<table><tr>";
  fusiontabledata += "<th>" + response.getDataTable().getColumnLabel(1) + "</th>";
  //   }
  fusiontabledata += "</tr><tr>";

  for (i = 0; i < numRows; i++) {
    fusiontabledata += "<td><a href='javascript:myFTclick(" + i + ")'>" + response.getDataTable().getValue(i, 1) + "</a></td>";
    //    }
    fusiontabledata += "</tr><tr>";
  }
  fusiontabledata += "</table>";
  //display the results on the page
  document.getElementById('sidebar').innerHTML = fusiontabledata;
}

function infoWindowContent(name, description) {
  content = '<div class="FT_infowindow"><h3>' + name +
    '</h3><div>' + description + '</div></div>';
  return content;
}

function myFTclick(row) {
  var description = FTresponse.getDataTable().getValue(row, 0);
  var name = FTresponse.getDataTable().getValue(row, 1);
  if (!gpolygons[row]) {
    var kml = FTresponse.getDataTable().getValue(row, 2);
    // create a geoXml3 parser for the click handlers
    var geoXml = new geoXML3.parser({
      map: map,
      zoom: false,
      infoWindow: infoWindow,
      singleInfoWindow: true
    });

    geoXml.parseKmlString("<Placemark>" + kml + "</Placemark>");
    geoXml.docs[0].gpolygons[0].setMap(null);
    gpolygons[row] = geoXml.docs[0].gpolygons[0].bounds.getCenter();
  }
  var position = gpolygons[row];
  if (!infoWindow) infoWindow = new google.maps.InfoWindow({});
  infoWindow.setOptions({
    content: infoWindowContent(name, description),
    pixelOffset: new google.maps.Size(0, 2),
    position: position
  });
  infoWindow.open(map);
}

function initialize() {
  myOptions = {
    zoom: zoom,
    center: myLatLng,
    mapTypeId: maptype
  };

  map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById("map_canvas"),
    myOptions);

  var geocoder = new google.maps.Geocoder();
  if (geocoder && geocodeTheCountry) {
    geocoder.geocode({
      'address': CountryName + " Country"
    }, function(results, status) {
      if (status == google.maps.GeocoderStatus.OK) {
        if (status != google.maps.GeocoderStatus.ZERO_RESULTS) {
          map.setCenter(results[0].geometry.location);
          map.fitBounds(results[0].geometry.viewport);
        } else {
          alert("No results found");
        }
      } else {
        alert("Geocode was not successful for the following reason: " + status);
      }
    });
  }

  var FT_Query = "SELECT 'kml_4326' FROM " + FT_TableID + " WHERE 'name_0' = '" + CountryName + "';";
  var FT_Options = {
    suppressInfoWindows: true,
    query: {
      from: FT_TableID,
      select: 'kml_4326',
      where: "'name_0' = '" + CountryName + "';"
    },
    styles: [{
      polygonOptions: {
        fillColor: "#FF0000",
        fillOpacity: 0.35
      }
    }]
  };
  layer = new google.maps.FusionTablesLayer(FT_Options);
  layer.setMap(map);

  google.maps.event.addListener(layer, "click", function(event) {
    infoWindow.close();
    infoWindow.setContent(infoWindowContent(event.row.name_1.value, event.row.name_0.value));
    infoWindow.setPosition(event.latLng);
    infoWindow.open(map);
  });
}
google.maps.event.addDomListener(window, 'load', initialize);
html,
body {
  width: 100%;
  height: 100%;
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
}
#map_canvas {
  width: 300px;
  height: 100%
}
.infowindow * {
  font-size: 90%;
  margin: 0
}
<script src="https://geoxml3.googlecode.com/svn/branches/polys/geoxml3.js"></script>
<script src="http://www.google.com/jsapi"></script>
<script src="https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js"></script>
<table style="width:100%; height:100%;">
  <tr style="width:100%; height:90%;">
    <td style="width:60%; height:100%;">
      <div id="map_canvas"></div>
    </td>
    <td>
      <div id="sidebar" style="width:300px;height:400px; overflow:auto"></div>
    </td>
  </tr>
</table>

Also, you could take a look at the Google GeoChart API, which is not that feature-rich but pretty easy to use. Try the following code in the API playground:

  function drawVisualization() {
  var data = google.visualization.arrayToDataTable([
    ['Province', 'Popularity'],
    ['Bremen', 100],
    ['Niedersachsen', 900],
    ['Saksen', 700],
    ['Saarland', 300],
    ['Bayern', 400]
  ]);

     var options = {
        region: 'DE',
        displayMode: 'regions',
        colorAxis: {colors: ['green', 'blue']},
       resolution:'provinces'
      };


  var geochart = new google.visualization.GeoChart(
      document.getElementById('visualization'));
  geochart.draw(data, options,  {width: 556, height: 347});
}