Introduction

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Frequently Asked Questions

1) When I view the KML demo on Internet Explorer I get this error "An invalid character was found in text content. Error processing source '...'. Why do I see this error?

When KML document is returned without a <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> at the start of the file. I'm not 100% sure that this will solve that problem, however, by leaving the <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> out the KML is more easily opened with Google Earth.

2) I want to use the <analytics:kml> JSP tag but I want my users to see a URL ending with the ".kml" extension. Can I do that with JAnalytics?

Yes you can, but you will have to create a mapping for that. Suppose that you are using the 3 line JSP example and it is in a JPS named sitevisitors.jsp. You will need to create a servlet-mapping for your JSP. Remember that a JSP is really just an easy to write servlet. Here's the configuration that you will need in your web.xml.

     <servlet>
        <servlet-name>SiteVisitors</servlet-name>
        <jsp-file>/sitevisitors.jsp</jsp-file>
    </servlet>

    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>SiteVisitors</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/visitors.kml</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

3) Currently I'm hosting my own 3 line JSP which uses the <analytics:kml> JSP tag. I have created a servlet-mapping to visitors.kml. How do I open that automatically in google maps?

We do that on Ansir's Site Visitors page. All you need to do is create a link like this:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=http://www.ansir.ca/visitors.kml

Alternately, just go to Google Maps and enter the URL of you KML in the search area.