Attaching properties to KmlPlacemark GE Plugin

Question

I have Lat/Lon data coming in as GeoJSON and each point has additional properties associated with it. I need to be able to get these properties passed into the callback function when the KmlPlacemark is clicked. I know I can use closures and individually register event listeners on them but I'd really prefer just having a single listener on the GEWindow object.

My solution involves sticking the properties into the placemark id as JSON data.

var data = {foo: 123, bar: 321};
var placemark = ge.createPlacemark(JSON.stringify(data));

then in the callback it gets parsed back into an object

google.earth.addEventListener(ge.getWindow(), 'click', function(e){
  var target = e.getTarget(),
      data;
  if (target && target.getType() == 'KmlPlacemark'){
    data = JSON.parse(target.getId());
    myHandler(target, data);
  }
});

is there a less hacky way of doing this?

Answer 1

I found a solution I'm happy with. I use an incrementing id for the placemarks and I store the properties in a object using the id as the key.

Dummy data

var pointData = [
  {lat: 123, lon: 123, properties: {foo: 1, bar: 2}},
  {lat: 123, lon: 123, properties: {foo: 1, bar: 2}},
  {lat: 123, lon: 123, properties: {foo: 1, bar: 2}}
];

Create Placemarks

var properties = {},
    currentId = 0;

pointData.forEach(function(point){

  var id        = (currentId++).toString();
      point     = ge.createPoint(''),
      placemark = ge.createPlacemark(id);

  point.setLatitude(point.lat);
  point.setLongitude(point.lon);
  placemark.setGeometry(point);

  properties[id] = point.properties;
});

Lookup properties in event handler

google.earth.addEventListener(ge.getWindow(), 'click', function(e){
  var target = e.getTarget(),
      data;
  if (target && target.getType() == 'KmlPlacemark'){
    data = properties[target.getId()];
    myHandler(target, data);
  }
});