Encoding coordinates

The polylines and polygons that you draw using the Google Maps JavaScript API consist of arrays of LatLng objects in latitude and longitude pairs.

The length of these arrays increases substantially, especially when you have shapes with too many nodes, in the case of long polylines or polygons that have too much detail.

Dealing with these arrays (that can be retrieved by the getPath() methods of polylines and polygons) is a major problem, especially when you have to save the shape to a DB. Serializing and deserializing lengthy arrays is frequently hulky.

However, you can compress the paths of the shapes with Google's polyline encoding algorithm.

Note

Detailed information on Google's polyline encoding algorithm

You can find detailed information about the polyline encoding algorithm at the following link:

https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/utilities/polylinealgorithm

By using the geometry library, you can encode and decode the paths of polylines and polygons...