I have seen all the responses to a similar question, however, they are all either old, or no one has answered them.

I have been given the task to obtain zip codes and display their corresponding boundaries to the user on a Google map, like in this example.

I am writing this code in Javascript and using the Google Maps API. I want the user to input a zip code and a marker drops down on their destination with a border representing that zip code area. I see that Google Maps currently has something in their map code that allows one to see the boundaries if someone puts a zip code on maps.google. I have used polygons but this wouldn't help make a border around a certain zip code.

Any suggestions on how to obtain this?

Thanks in advance!

I have seen all the responses to a similar question, however, they are all either old, or no one has answered them.

I have been given the task to obtain zip codes and display their corresponding boundaries to the user on a Google map, like in this example.

I am writing this code in Javascript and using the Google Maps API. I want the user to input a zip code and a marker drops down on their destination with a border representing that zip code area. I see that Google Maps currently has something in their map code that allows one to see the boundaries if someone puts a zip code on maps.google.com. I have used polygons but this wouldn't help make a border around a certain zip code.

Any suggestions on how to obtain this?

Thanks in advance!

• javascript
• google-maps
• google-maps-api-3
• zipcode

• Have you tried looking at how Google have done this with their own page and their own API? – Lee Taylor Commented Jul 13, 2012 at 13:39
• Yes, a lot of the things I find are articles and what not. Another post said that they use Twitter API but I couldn't find that particular one. – njavia66 Commented Jul 13, 2012 at 13:47
• I just spoke with sales at Digital Map Products inquiring about doing this via their ParcelStream service, and they advised me Google is among their clients. (service is around 10k/month). – johntrepreneur Commented May 16, 2013 at 23:08
• use www.boundaries-io.com worst very well. – Jeryl Cook Commented Jul 26, 2016 at 3:10

3 Answers 3

There is not an easy answer to this that I know of. But here is a high level design of how to do it.

All of the shape files for zip codes can be found at the census site and can be downloaded from this ftp server. However, that's a ton of data, so you need a place to store it. I recommend using the PostgreSQL database with the PostGIS add on. It is free and open source and generally awesome. It has a utility for converting .shp files (the type in the census shape files) into PostGIS geometry form. PostGIS let's you retrieve the shapes back out as KML.

You can either a) retrieve a shape from the database as KML when it is needed and display it on the map or b) pre-generate a kml file for every zip code ahead of time and retrieve a file as it is needed (this would take up quite a bit of space).

You need to become familiar with GeoJSON formatted FeatureCollections. You can render them on any set of map tiles with OpenLayers (or probably Google API as well)

This may seem pretty hard, but is totally approachable.

You can purchase GeoJSON files for groups of Zipcodes if you search around.

DOwnload the shapefile from here https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/tiger-line-shapefile-2019-2010-nation-u-s-2010-census-5-digit-zip-code-tabulation-area-zcta5-na

Simplifying using GDAL

We can use the ogr2ogr command from the GDAL library to convert the shapefile to geojson but even with only one field and simple coordinates the output file is over 1GB.

ogr2ogr -f GeoJSON -select ZCTA5CE10 -lco COORDINATE_PRECISION=6 zcta.geojson /vsizip/tl_2017_us_zcta510.zip

I tried to simplify this to topojson, but the topojson library chokes on this even on a very powerful 2017 MacBook Pro.

npx topojson -q 1e4 -o zcta_topo.json zcta.geojson >> JavaScript head out of memory

Another method I tried was using the -simplify option in ogr2ogr. The simplify argument is a unit of measure based on the spatial reference system of the shapefile. Since the srs for the ZCTAs is WGS84 the unit is a lat/lon measure.

ogr2ogr -f "GeoJSON" -lco COORDINATE_PRECISION=6 -select ZCTA5CE10 -simplify 0.006 zcta.geojson /vsizip/tl_2017_us_zcta510.zip

This creates a much smaller GeoJSON file (30MB) which the TopoJSON can easily handle and we end up with a more managable (but still too large) 13MB topojson file. Additionally, the topology of the dataset is very poor at medium to large scales.

npx topojson -q 1e5 -o zcta_topo.json zcta.geojson

Simplifying using Postgis

Create a docker volume to use for persistence docker volume create postgresql

Run the postgis docker

docker run --name postgis -p 25432:5432 -it --mount source=postgresql,target=/var/lib/postgresql kartoza/postgis

Load the zcta shapefile into postgis

ogr2ogr -f "PostgreSQL" -progress -select "ZCTA5CE10" -overwrite -lco OVERWRITE=yes -nln zcta -nlt PROMOTE_TO_MULTI -t_srs "EPSG:4326" PG:"dbname='gis' host='localhost' port='25432' user='docker' password='docker'" ~/Downloads/tl_2017_us_zcta510/tl_2017_us_zcta510.shp

Sample query with st_simplifypreservetopology (New England). This takes a long time to run for the entire country and we still lose a lot of the topology.

select st_simplifypreservetopology(wkb_geometry, 0.025) as thegeom, zcta5ce10 from zcta where zcta5ce10 like '0%' OR zcta5ce10 like '1%'

Simplifying using Mapshaper (Best solution)

The Mapshaper library can output TopoJSON directly from the shapefile without JavaScript memory heap errors. This command creates a ~6MB topojson file that we can use. It also manages to keep topology very well by assuming that very close verticies and edges should be coincident.

npx -p mapshaper mapshaper-xl tl_2017_us_zcta510.shp snap -simplify 0.1% -filter-fields ZCTA5CE10 -rename-fields zip=ZCTA5CE10 -o format=topojson zcta_mapshaper.json

source:https://github.com/elastic/ems-file-service/issues/6