GeoJSON rendering improvements | Hacker News Reader

GeoJSON rendering improvements

github.com

46 pointsneokya20 comments

You guys should build data change visualization. So you can track the changes to the data visually for each commit. And then people can send in pull requests to enhance data and people can inspect and discuss the changes. This can ultimately be used as an api for applications that work with it. Implementing this will have a profound effect on the nature of collection and maintenance of geographical data.

I'm happy that this idea has found a good environment to flourish in. It's going to be a lot of fun and you're going to improve a lot of people's lives as a consequence of it. Enjoy it, and keep up the excellent work.

So maybe I missed this in a previous conversation on Github's GeoJSON support, but what's the bigger picture here? I see a feature. I clearly recognize its utility. But, I can't seem to spot the larger trend that prompted this feature? Are there a lot of people using Github with GeoJSON files that are stored in the repo itself? If so, what are some of the use cases for this data being stored in Github? For some reason, I would have imagined that this type of data would be stored in a database and not a Github repo and that's what's confusing me.

There are a lot of public datasets that consist of raw GeoJSON data so that non-developers can easily view/use the data. As an example, http://github.com/slugis/incidents

Is there any sort of catalogue of all publicly available GeoJSON datasets available on Github?

It's not a catalog, but you can use the 'extension:' search option in the command bar.

https://github.com/search?q=extension%3Ageojson&type=Code&re...

Will give you all of the results, it definitely needs a slightly better way of searching.

Part of it seems to be a play to get more governments, who often have A LOT of geo data on Github. Github is in many ways positioning itself to be a public repository of data, not just code.

Speaking of that, among all the startups that target developers, I've noticed a dearth of startups that focus on providing database backups with versioning, including functionality for functionally defining how to roll back to previous versions of a database and merging or "rebasing" of databases.

I think it makes sense in the larger open data, open government world: there are a ton of people using GIS data who would like the ability to version control, branching or forks but do not benefit from the massive overhead and expense of commercial GIS systems and do not have significant development skills available to build something complicated.

Databases make the most sense when your data changes frequently but if you have something like congressional districts, census information, etc. where the data changes infrequently but is likely to be shared widely the DVCS workflow and simplicity are really appealing. Right now you could do quite a lot with e.g. a gh-pages branch which contains GeoJSON and a simple LeafletJS viewer to combine files into layers; being able to quickly preview data files just makes that easier and it seems unlikely that they won't be adding some sort of diff comparison feature in the future.

d3.js is getting more and more popular, and journalism isn't getting less data-based.

Consider the last time there was an election. Those dynamically updated maps use this kind of file.

And without this support, shape files can't be viewed at all in a GitHub project, which is actually kind of ridiculous in 2013.

Furthermore, it encourages shape file providers to move their content to GitHub so we don't have the standard scenario of "download this .zip file and compile it to your preferred format to see if it's worth your time". It streamlines the process significantly.

It also gives them an edge over BitBucket. :)

While all you geo geeks are in here, Leaflet just released a new version: http://leafletjs.com/2013/06/26/leaflet-0-6-released-dc-code...

Anyone have any idea why the GeoJSON files here still show up as the raw files? https://github.com/johan/world.geo.json

Your file extension is geo.json. Rename to .geojson?

But according to the blog post, `.json` should be fine (unless `.geo.json` is not considered `.json`)

this renders as a map for me:

https://github.com/johan/world.geo.json/blob/master/countrie...

Ah, works fine for me now

You have to be viewing the file itself, not the repo

Finally! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5875825

I don't see anything about it in the docs, is there color formatting for polygons, so you could do choropleth maps?

This feels like some interns summer project and not a real feature.

It isn't. To both. It's a "real feature" (like everything on the site), and already there's a ton of people doing really cool things with the data. We're pretty stoked to see what new things come out of it.

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