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PHPRiot.com:
Reducing a Map Path Using Douglas-Peucker Algorithm
Apr 29, 2011 @ 17:40:42

On PHPRiot.com there's a new tutorial showing you how to use the Douglas-Peucker algorithm to make the pathing on your map the simplest possible (the fewer points the better) having serious benefits a wide range of users, most notably those on mobile devices.

When drawing a path on a map (for instance, the directions from point A to point B) it is important to consider the limitations of the device you're drawing the path on. In this article, I will show you how to reduce the number of points in a path so the path can be displayed with minimal loss of quality on devices such as iPhone or Android-powered devices that may struggle with an extremely large set of points.

Using the GTFS service's data, he's been creating maps for an iPhone application. Naturally, a path with 700 points would take a lot of resources to render. Using the Douglas-Peucker algorithm he can reduce it down to a much more manageable 70 points. He explains the algorithm briefly and hows how to implement it in PHP with three classes - ShapePoint, Shape and ShapeReducer. The resulting reduced dataset is then passed directly over to a Google Maps for plotting.

tagged: douglaspeucker algorithm reduce tutorial map point path

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