How to use what kind of geotagged images with maps app?

[hede5562]

The maps app seems to be included by default. At least gpx files do open with a openstreetmap view within the web client of my test server (OpenCloud 8.0.1 installed via docker compose on Debian 13). Even the folderViewEnabled value was already present in apps.yaml. I changed folderViewEnabled:false to folderViewEnabled:true, restarted OpenCloud via "docker compose restart" and now I can "Switch to map view" as view mode in the folder view. So I think it is - somehow - installed and configured.

Yet even if I uploaded some images with exif gps data opencloud tells me there are "No files with location data". And within the sidebar of all these pictures I cannot find any maps app activity. Nothing.

Does anyone know what kind of "geo location data" the maps app expects? I tried pictures from different smartphones, but it seems the Exif.GPSInfo within those pictures is of no use here.

Also the readme.md in the OpenCloud Maps repository is of no great help here, as it makes no statement of what kind of geo location data it expects. Maybe I'm missing some background information which is clear for others.

[jmrplens]

The maps app never reads the EXIF itself. It only shows files that already carry a location property, and in OpenCloud that property is written by the search service when it extracts metadata with Apache Tika. The default extractor is basic (SEARCH_EXTRACTOR_TYPE), which indexes names and paths without opening the file, so no photo ever gets a location and the map view stays at "No files with location data".

With SEARCH_EXTRACTOR_TYPE=tika, each file is sent to Tika, and the search service reads geo:lat and geo:long from its answer (services/search/pkg/content/tika_location.go), which is how Tika reports the EXIF GPSInfo. It then stores them on the file as libre.graph.location.* metadata, WebDAV returns that as oc:location, and the map view only pins the resources that have it (LocationFolderView.vue). The location panel in the sidebar only appears for files that have it, which is why you see nothing there either.

In opencloud-compose that is the search/tika.yml file, which is off by default for performance reasons:

docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f search/tika.yml -f <your other files> up -d

or add search/tika.yml to COMPOSE_FILE in .env. It has to be up -d: docker compose restart does not pick up a new compose file or new environment variables.

New uploads get their location a few seconds after the upload. The photos you already have will not: the index skips files whose modification time has not changed, so they need a forced rescan:

docker compose exec opencloud opencloud search index --all-spaces --force-rescan --insecure

--insecure makes the command talk to the search service without TLS, which is how the internal gRPC services run in the default setup. Without it the command fails with tls: first record does not look like a TLS handshake. On a large library the forced rescan takes a while, since every file goes through Tika again.

Two limits to keep in mind: Tika only gets files under 20 MiB by default (SEARCH_CONTENT_EXTRACTION_SIZE_LIMIT, in bytes), so very large photos stay without a location, and the map only pins the files of the folder you have open, not those in its subfolders. If a photo still has no location after the rescan, download it back from OpenCloud and check that the GPS tags survived the upload (exiftool -gps:all photo.jpg).

I tested it on opencloudeu/opencloud-rolling:8.0.1 with apache/tika:latest (Tika 4.0.0, the image search/tika.yml pulls) and the maps app from opencloud-compose with folderViewEnabled: true, using a JPEG with EXIF GPS:

Step	oc:location on the photo
default extractor	none
after switching to Tika, same photo	none
search index --all-spaces --insecure	none (skipped as unchanged)
same with --force-rescan	the photo's coordinates, and the pin shows up in the map view
a new upload after the switch	set within 20 seconds, no reindex

[hede5562]

Hey, thank you for your phenomenal good answer, including step by step instructions and background information. That is a really good example for how to answer questions.

[hede5562]

This way it is working also for me. Thank you.

This description should get added to the admin documentation on docs.opencloud.eu, of not already done so. A short note, that the location must be present in the oc-metadata and that tika can do this, with a pointer to some documentation like the one from @jmrplens here, could also be added to the readme.md in the github project.

One thing I'm missing in the maps web-app currently is some kind of interactivity for the markers within the maps folder view. Currently, at least for me (maybe some bug on my side?), I cannot see which of the markers corresponds to which picture. Clicking one of the markers could open the corresponding image in the sidebar. Or hovering a marker could offer metadata like the pictures name, for example, or maybe also show a thumbnail or so. But this is just a minor wishlist-item.

[jmrplens]

Glad it works. I opened opencloud-eu/web-extensions#575 to add this to the maps README, as you suggested.