Web Development

GIS for Web Developers: Adding 'Where' to Your Web Applications

GIS for Web Developers: Adding 'Where' to Your Web Applications

Scott Davis

Language: English

Pages: 176

ISBN: 0974514098

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


There is a hidden revolution going on: geography is moving from niche to the mainstream. News reports routinely include maps and satellite images. More and more pieces of equipment cell phones, cars, computers now contain Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers. Many of the major database vendors have made geographic data types standard in their flagship products.

GIS for Web Developers introduces Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in simple terms and demonstrates hands-on uses. With this book, you'll explore popular websites like maps.google.com, see the technologies they use, and learn how to create your own. Written with the usual Pragmatic Bookshelf humor and real-world experience, GIS for Web Developers makes geographic programming concepts accessible to the common developer.

This book will demystify GIS and show you how to make GIS work for you. You'll learn the buzzwords and explore ways to geographically-enable your own applications. GIS is not a fundamentally difficult domain, but there is a barrier to entry because of the industry jargon. This book will show you how to "walk the walk" and "talk the talk" of a geographer.

You'll learn how to find the vast amounts of free geographic data that's out there and how to bring it all together. Although this data is free, it's scattered across the web on a variety of different sites, in a variety of incompatible formats. You'll see how to convert it among several popular formats including plain text, ESRI Shapefiles, and Geography Markup Language (GML).

With this book in hand, you'll become a real geographic programmer using the Java programming language. You'll find plenty of working code examples in Java using some of the many GIS-oriented applications and APIs. You'll be able to:

  • Find free sources of GIS data on the web
  • Browse GIS data using open source desktop viewers
  • Manipulate GIS data programmatically
  • Store and retrieve data using geographically-enabled databases
  • Explore free web toolkits like Google Maps
  • Publish and consume web services using Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) interfaces

    • CSS Essentials

    How to Design Websites (Portfolio Skills)

    CSS Text

    Predictive Analytics for Dummies

    The Web Designers Idea Book (More of the Best Themes, Trends and Styles in Website Design, Volume 2)

    Pro Spring MVC: With Web Flow

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    where it’s not useful. In geography, though, it’s not useful at all. In fact, it’s downright misleading. Basic Mapping Terminology Maps commonly present a graticule, or grid of X and Y lines. In geography, the X axis is called a line of latitude. The Y axis is called a line of longitude. On a globe the lines of latitude are often called parallels. Like rungs on a ladder, they never cross each other or vary in relation to one another. The zero-degree parallel is called the equator. Latitude lines

    would end up being pretty worthless to us in the real world—hardly a photograph at all—but an 8-bit image is surprisingly expressive; 256 shades of gray gives us the detailed panchromatic images that we’ve been looking at throughout this chapter. Modern computer applications such as web browsers can display 8-bit imagery without a problem. However, you might stumble across 16-bit imagery available for download on the Web. These files use 2 bytes to store grayscale information per pixel. This

    break a sweat. 6.5 Adding Shapefiles Manually Although adding FeatureTypes through the GUI is convenient, knowing how to tweak the underlying configuration files is an invaluable 143 A DDING S HAPEFILES M ANUALLY Figure 6.5: The distorted, default Mapbuilder view troubleshooting skill. Luckily, there aren’t many moving parts when it comes to adding new FeatureTypes to GeoServer by hand. The main file to start with is catalog.xml, found in geoserver/data_dir. It stores pointers to our

    xmlns:wfs="http://www.opengis.net/wfs" service="WFS" version="1.0.0" outputFormat="GML2" > Not bad. I can match this XML to the QueryString in my mind. Since we’re about to begin filtering the output, I like to think about it in terms of SQL as well. The query we just performed would be written in SQL as select * from st99_d00;. The first filtering we’ll do is limiting the number of fields returned in the GML. In SQL I’d write select NAME,

    night, independent of religious affiliation. What better reason to change the way you line up your map, even if you can’t be bothered with changing the description of what you’re doing? For an exercise in disorientation, take a look at some south-sideup maps.∗ They are quite popular with tourists “down under” in Australia and New Zealand. ∗. http://www.flourish.org/upsidedownmap 23 V ECTOR D ATA 2.3 Vector Data The arrows, lines, and dots used by the television meteorologist are all examples

    Download sample

    Download