Geo

This is just a tiny library (actually a gem but not published on rubygems.org) which abstracts away working with GPS points and bounds on the Mercator map.

It was created because I wanted to give Mapbox a set of GPS (lat/lon) points and it would return a properly centered and zoomed in static map. Except that it doesn't do that.

So I crawled around the web and composed all I needed from those three libraries:

• geo-viewport Node.js package,
• node-sphericalmercator Node.js package,
• and Simple Mercator Location Ruby gem.

None of them do all I needed and some of them are really cryptic. It seems to work properly but if you find a bug, please let me know.

What does it do?

The Geo::Viewport class initializer expects map bounds array (WSEN: westmost, southmost, eastmost and northmost coordinates) and an array of mercator map dimensions in pixels. It than calculates the center, the zoom level and a new set of bounds for given dimensions. Why new bounds? Because zoom level is a whole number so the map bounds are expanded a bit to reflect that. The instance methods are used to get those properties.

The Geo::Utils module is a place for all kinds of conversion methods but there is one externally useful: the bounds method. It expects an array of GPS points and returns a [w, s, e, n] map bounds array which then can be fed into the initializer.

Usage

See examples, too.

# Photos longitude and latitude.
gps_data = [
  [6.9558,             50.941691666666664],
  [6.956291666666667,  50.94157777777777],
  [6.9201500000000005, 50.948233333333334],
  [9.188316666666667,  45.46555],
  [9.189741666666666,  45.46562222222222],
  [9.185799999999999,  45.46757222222222]
]

# Calculate the westmost, southmost, eastmost and northmost coordinates.
map_bounds = Geo::Utils.bounds(gps_data)
dimensions = [1280, 960]
viewport   = Geo::Viewport.new(map_bounds, dimensions)

map_bounds          # => [6.9201500000000005, 45.46555, 9.189741666666666, 50.948233333333334]
viewport.bounds     # => [1.021728515625, 44.574817404670306, 15.084228515625, 51.60437164681676]
viewport.dimensions # => [1280, 960]
viewport.width      # => 1280
viewport.height     # => 960
viewport.center     # => [8.054945833333333, 48.206891666666664]
viewport.center_lon # => 8.054945833333333
viewport.center_lat # => 48.206891666666664
viewport.zoom       # => 7

Running examples

One of the examples uses Gnuplot. If you are on OS X and you use Homebrew, you may need to install it via brew install gnuplot --with-x. Also check the dependecy gems like k_means_pp and exifr.

$ cd examples
$ ruby simple.rb
$ ruby mapbox.rb
$ ruby mapbox_with_clusters.rb

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'geo', git: 'https://github.com/ollie/geo-mercator.git'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

Contributing

1. Fork it (https://github.com/ollie/geo-mercator/fork)
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create a new Pull Request