shape map file decoding

Question

I recently started off on working with shape map files, I downloaded a few shape files from the internet, the files had the following extension .shp, .dbf, .shx which I am unable to decipher what these extensions are. Then I found some actionscript libraries to parse these files here

However I am not able to understand the documentation there.

But using some example files I was finally able to draw a map in actionscript. However these are without latitudes and longitudes,

Is latitude and longitude information stored in shape files, if so, how do I extract the data?. Or are there special shape files with latitude/longitude information encoded into?

Answer 1

Just use the x/y coordinates directly as long/lat.

Quoting from The 'Pedia:

Shapefiles deal with coordinates in terms of X and Y, although they are often storing longitude and latitude, respectively. While working with the X and Y terms, be sure to respect the order of the terms (longitude is stored in X, latitude in Y).

It's not guaranteed that these coordinates are lat/long -- sometimes they can be pixels. However, that's determined by the generator of the Shapefile -- nothing inherit to the Shapefile itself.

Answer 2

You may want to check out iLog Elixir which has Flex components for Mapping and an application to convert Shapefiles into Flex Map Objects.