OpenLayers

Copyright (c) 2005-2012 OpenLayers Contributors. See authors.txt for more details.

OpenLayers is a JavaScript library for building map applications on the web. OpenLayers is made available under a BSD-license. Please see license.txt in this distribution for more details.

Getting OpenLayers

OpenLayers lives at http://www.openlayers.org/. Find details on downloading stable releases or the development version the development site.

Installing OpenLayers

You can use OpenLayers as-is by copying build/OpenLayers.js and the entire theme/ and img/ directories up to your webserver and putting them in the same directory. The files can be in subdirectories on your website, or right in the root of the site, as in these examples. To include the OpenLayers library in your web page from the root of the site, use:

<script type="text/javascript" src="/OpenLayers.js" />

As an example, using bash (with the release files in ~/openlayers):

$ cd /var/www/html
$ cp ~/openlayers/OpenLayers.js ./
$ cp -R ~/openlayers/theme ./
$ cp -R ~/openlayers/img ./

If you want to use the multiple-file version of OpenLayers (for, say, debugging or development purposes), copy the lib/ directory up to your webserver in the same directory you put the img/ folder. Then add the following to your web page instead:

<script type="text/javascript" src="/lib/OpenLayers.js" />

As an example, using bash (with the release files in ~/openlayers):

$ cd /var/www/html
$ cp -R ~/openlayers/lib ./
$ cp -R ~/openlayers/theme ./
$ cp -R ~/openlayers/img ./

Alternate OpenLayers Versions in this Release

The following versions of OpenLayers single file builds are included in this release and can be used in place of OpenLayers.js in any of the above instructions:

1. OpenLayers.js - full build --> Includes everything except the alternate language translations and deprecated classes.
2. OpenLayers.mobile.js - a mobile focused build --> Includes a subset of the OpenLayers library to serve common mobile web app use cases. This build provides access to OpenStreetMap, Bing, WMS, WFS and vector layers; touch optimized controls; geolocation; vector editing and interaction tools. The examples tagged mobile can use this build.
3. OpenLayers.light.js - a simple use case focused build --> Includes a subset of the OpenLayers library to serve the basic use case of displaying points and polygons on a map. This build provides access to OpenStreetMap, Bing, Google, WMS, and vector layers; basic map controls; and vector interaction tools. The examples tagged light can use this build.

Using OpenLayers in Your Own Website

The examples directory is full of useful examples.

Documentation is available at http://trac.osgeo.org/openlayers/wiki/Documentation. You can generate the API documentation with http://www.naturaldocs.org/ As an example, using bash (with the release files in ~/openlayers):

$ cd ~/openlayers/
$ /path/to/NaturalDocs -i lib/ -o HTML doc/ -p doc_config/ -s Default OL

Information on changes in the API is available in release notes found in the notes folder.

Contributing to OpenLayers

Please join the email lists at http://openlayers.org/mailman/listinfo Patches are welcome!