#PostGIS Preview A lightweight node api and frontend for quicky previewing PostGIS queries. Pull Requests Welcomed! See TODOs below, real issues coming shortly.

###Why I needed to be able to test out PostGIS queries in a local environment and iterate quickly. CartoDB provides this functionality, giving users a SQL pane and a map view to quickly see the geometries returned from the database (This UI and SQL preview workflow are inspired by the CartoDB editor)

I asked on twitter if anyone had solutions to this problem, and reponses included:

• Run queries in pgadmin and use ST_asGeoJson(), copy and paste the geojson into geojson.io
• Use QGIS dbmanager. This works, but requires a few clicks once the data are returned to add them to the map.
• Use various command line tools that show previews in the terminal or send the results to geojson.io programmatically.

###How it works The express.js app has a single endpoint: /sql that is passed a SQL query q as a url parameter. That query is passed to PostGIS using the pg-promise module. The resulting data are transformed into topojson using a modified dbgeo module (modified to include parsing WKB using the WKX module), and the response is sent to the frontend.

The frontend is a simple bootstrap layout with a leaflet map, cartodb basemaps, a table, and a SQL pane. The topojson from the API is parsed using omnivore by Mapbox, and added to the map as an L.geoJson layer with generic styling.

How to Use

• Clone this repo
• Have a PostGIS instance running somewhere that the node app can talk to
• Edit config.sample.js to include your database connection details, rename it config.js
• Install dependencies npm install
• Run the express app node server.js
• Load the frontend http://localhost:3000
• Query like a boss

Notes

• PostGIS preview expects your geometry column to be called geom, and that it contains WGS84 geometries

###Todo

• ERROR HANDLING EVERYWHERE

• Add Tabular View

• Add Simple Infowindow with all attributes

• Add SQL Syntax Highlighting (Codemirror?)

• Add recent queries and forward/backward arrows

• Add url hash to remember data vs. map view

• Add client-side data export as CSV, geoJSON, etc