pyLiveKML 0.0.4

A python package for (approximately) live updates to Google Earth Pro.

What is pyLiveKML?

pyLiveKML is an implementation of Google's Keyhole Markup Language (KML) that enables an (approximately) live feed of geospatial information into Google Earth Pro (GEP). GEP is updated on the fly using an implementation of the mechanism described in the KML specification.

Several simple evaluation apps are included with the pyLiveKML source. These projects use the Flask application server, and its integrated development webserver, to construct and publish KML files to GEP. Re these evaluation apps, the reader should be conscious that:

• <NetworkLinkControl> KML tags are used to create, change and delete content in GEP.
  • GEP only accepts <NetworkLinkControl> tags from an HTTP server for security reasons; local files are forbidden.
  • Any HTTP server that is able to dynamically generate content can be used.
• Flask is used as the application/webserver for the evaluation apps, but the authors of Flask, Pallet Projects, make it very clear that their development HTTP server is not suitable for production. If you're doing anything more than dev and/or testing, you should probably heed their advice.

GIS and OS Compatibility

pyLiveKML has been tested only with Google Earth Pro on Microsoft Windows 10. It is possible that it may work with other KML-compliant GIS's and/or other operating systems, but that has not been tested by the author and is unknown at this time.

Has the entire KML specification been implemented?

No. Only a subset of the KML classes that are described in the KML specification has been implemented at this time; see the pyLiveKML documentation for a list. The subset was chosen based on the author's personal experience, i.e. what has proven "useful" to me in the past. The list of supported classes could certainly be expanded if there is interest.

Evaluation Applications

Several evaluation or example applications are available on Github

Documentation

Licence

Contributions

I'm willing to do a certain amount of work expanding the KML classes (and, in some cases, the fields) that are supported by pyLiveKML.