users.rst

User's guide

Dependencies

See the package.json file for a list of required and optional dependencies used by GeoJS. All libraries listed as optional dependencies are built into the main geo.min.js bundle, but are not present in the geo.lean.min.js bundle. If you want to use a subset of the optional dependencies, you can use the lean bundle and import any required dependency libraries into your page before the lean bundle, making sure that the library is exposed under its standard name in global scope.

Note

JQuery is included in the distributed bundle. Internally, this version will always be used and exposed as geo.jQuery. GeoJS will also set the global variable window.$ if no other version is detected.

Software conventions

At its core, GeoJS is an object oriented framework designed to be extended and customized. The inheritance mechanism used provides an isolated closure inside the constructor to maintain private methods and variables. Prototypical inheritance is performed by a helper method called geo.inherit. This method copies public methods declared on the parent class's prototype. In general, classes inside GeoJS do not declare methods on the class prototype. Instead, methods are typically bound to the instance inside the constructor. This provides access to the private scope. As a consequence, a class should always call its parent's constructor before extending the implementation.

Another convention used by GeoJS eliminates the need to use the new keyword when constructing a new instance. This is done by checking this of the current context. If it is not an instance of the current class, then the constructor is called again on a new object and the result is returned to the caller.

The conventions we use result in the following boilerplate code in every class definition inside GeoJS.

// New class, 'B', added to the geo module derived from class, 'A'.
geo.B = function (args) {

    // Constructors take a single object to hold options passed to each
    // constructor in the class hierarchy.  The default is usually an
    // empty object.
    args = args || {};

    // Here we handle calling the constructor again with a new object
    // when necessary.
    if (!(this instanceof geo.B)) {

        // Note: this will only happen in the constructor called by the
        // user directly, not by all the constructors in the hierarchy.
        return new geo.B(args);
    }

    // Call the parent class's constructor.
    geo.A.call(this, args);

    // Declare private variables and save overridden superclass methods.
    var m_this = this,
        s_func = this.func,
        m_var = 1;

    this.func = function () {

        // Call the super method.
        s_func();

        m_var += 1;
        return m_this;
    };

    return this;
};

// Static methods and variables can be added here.
geo.B.name = 'Class B';

// Initialize the class prototype.
geo.inherit(geo.B, geo.A);

Note

• Variable naming conventions

  • The instance (this) is saved as m_this.
  • Super class methods are saved with the prefix s_.
  • Private variables are prefixed with m_.

• Methods beginning with _ are meant to be protected so they should only be called from within the class itself or by an inherited class.
• Use m_this to reference the instantiation inside public methods.
• Constructor options are passed inside a single object argument. Defaults should be used whenever possible.
• When possible, functions should return the class instance to support method chaining. This is particularly true for class property setters.
• In many cases, class methods return null to indicate an error.

Class overview

The latest version of the full API documentation is at https://opengeoscience.github.io/geojs/apidocs/geo.html.

GeoJS is made up of the following core classes. Click on the link to go to the documentation for each of the classes.

geo.map

The map object is attached to a DOM element and contains all visible layers and features.

geo.renderer

A renderer is responsible for drawing geometries and images on the map. This is an abstract class which serves to define the minimal interface for a renderer. Not all features are available in all renderers, and an appropriate renderer must be selected for a layer based on the features that will be used. If a renderer is requested when creating a layer, and that renderer is not supported by the current installation, a fallback renderer may be used instead and a warning sent to the console. geo.webgl.webglRenderer requires webGL support. geo.svg.svgRenderer requires the d3 library to be present.

geo.layer

Layer objects are created by the map's createLayer method. This is an abstract class defining the interfaces required for all layers. Every layer must have a specific renderer. The following are useful layer implementations.

geo.featureLayer

This is the primary container for features such as lines, points, etc.

geo.osmLayer

This layer displays tiled imagery from an openstreetmaps compatible tile server.

geo.gui.uiLayer

This layer contains user interface widgets that should generally be placed on top of all other layers.

geo.feature

Feature objects are created by the featureLayers's createFeature method. Features are created from an arbitrary array of objects given by the feature.data method. Properties of the features can be given as constant values or as functional accessors into the provided data object. The styles provided are largely independent of the renderer used; however, some differences are necessary due to internal limitations. The following are feature types currently available.

• geo.pointFeature
• geo.lineFeature
• geo.pathFeature
• geo.graphFeature
• geo.vectorFeature

Note

Some features types are only available for specific renderers.

geo.gui.widget

This is an abstract interface for creating widgets that the user can interact with.

• geo.gui.domWidget
• geo.gui.svgWidget

• geo.gui.sliderWidget
• geo.gui.legendWidget

geo.mapInteractor

This class handles all mouse and keyboard events for the map. Users can customize the mouse and keyboard bindings through this class.

geo.fileReader

This is an abstract class defining the interface for file readers. Currently, the only implemented reader is geo.geojsonReader, which is an extendable geojson reader.

Coordinate systems

A major component of GeoJS's core library involves managing several coordinate systems that are used to keep layers aligned on the screen. The following conventions are used in GeoJS's documentation and codebase when referring to coordinates:

Latitude/longitude coordinates

Expressed in degrees relative to the WGS84 datum as objects using keys x for longitude and y for latitude. Longitudes are assumed to be in the range [-180, 180]. Some map projections (such as the default EPSG:3857) are periodic in x and handle automatic wrapping of longitudes.

GCS coordinates

Expressed in standard units (usually meters) as defined by Proj.4, which is used to perform coordinate transformations internally. The coordinate system EPSG:4326 is equivalent to latitude/longitude coordinates described above. Points in these coordinate systems are given as an object with keys x and y providing the horizontal (left to right) and vertical (bottom to top) positions respectively. GCS coordinates have an optional z value that is 0 by default. The units of z should be expressed in the same units as x and y.

Display coordinates

Expressed in units of pixels relative to the top-left corner of the current viewport from top to bottom.

World coordinates

These are the coordinates used internally as coordinates of the 3D scene in much the sense as defined in 3D graphics. The world coordinates are a rescaled and translated version of the GCS coordinates so that the world coordinates of the current viewport is near 1 in each axis. This is done to provide well conditioned transformation matrices that can be used accurately in contexts of limited precision such as WebGL or CSS. In order to achieve this, the world coordinate system is dynamic at run time and will change as the user pans and zooms the map. By convention, the world coordinates are given relative to a dynamic "scale" and "origin". Changes to these values trigger events on the map that allow layers and features to respond and update their views as necessary.

Layer coordinates

To allow flexibility for layer/renderer implementation, layers are allowed to use their own custom coordinate system via the functions toLocal and fromLocal. Features inside a layer should always pass coordinates through these methods to access the coordinates inside the layer's context.

Feature coordinates

Features have a GCS property attached to them that should be taken to mean a geographic coordinate system for the data passed into the feature. For features such as points, coordinates are automatically transformed into the map's GCS by Proj.4, then transformed into world coordinates, and finally into layer coordinates before being passed to the layer's rendering methods.

Coordinate transformation methods

To facilitate uniform transformation between the many coordinate systems used inside a map object, there are many available transformation methods provided in the core API. These methods vary from being useful to all users of the library to methods that are only relevant to developers interacting with low level renderers or wishing to optimize performance. The following is a list of transform methods present in the library as well as example uses for them.

geo.map.gcsToDisplay/displayToGcs(c, gcs)

This is the most common transformation method that converts from a geographic coordinate system into pixel coordinates on the map. If no GCS is given, the method will assume the coordinate system of the map. For example, to get the lat/lon of the point under the mouse you would get the pixel coordinates relative to the map's container and pass them to this method as c in map.displayToGcs(c, 'EPSG:4326').

geo.map.gcsToWorld/worldToGcs(c, gcs)

This performs the conversion to internal world coordinates that are scaled and translated to deal with round off errors. This method is made available so that layers can use a consistent base coordinate system from which the camera transforms are derived.

geo.layer.fromLocal/toLocal(c)

This converts between world space and a custom coordinates system defined by each layer. The default implementation of these methods returns the original coordinate unmodified, but layers can choose to override this behavior as needed. Users generally do not need to call this method unless they are interacting with the low level context of the layer.

geo.camera.worldToDisplay/displayToWorld(c, width, height)

This converts between world space coordinates and display pixel coordinates given a viewport size. In addition to these methods, the camera class provides access to the raw transformation matrices for layers that can make use of them directly. For layers supporting CSS there is also a camera.css property that returns a CSS transform representing the current camera state.