[GeoJSON] RFC-001 vote

Tim Schaub noreply at geocartic.com
Wed May 23 17:04:46 PDT 2007


Hey-

Allan Doyle wrote:
> VOTE HERE: http://www.yourfreepoll.com/wzdbtaousp.html

Thanks for keeping this going.  I like GeoJSON.  However, I voted 
against RFC-001.  As was suggested, I'm posting my arguments to the list.

The changes I'd like to see are reflected here: 
http://wiki.geojson.org/RFC-2

This proposal describes the structure for four classes of GeoJSON 
objects: Geometry, GeometryCollection, Feature, and FeatureCollection.

The Geometry types described are Point, LineString, Polygon, MultiPoint, 
MultiLineString, MultiPolygon, and Box.

In my mind, this proposal keeps GeoJSON simpler.  There are a total of 4 
required names in the GeoJSON vocabulary: type, coordinates, members, 
and properties.  With these four names, the above objects can be 
described concisely - balancing human and machine readability.  (I like 
"data" or "coords" better than "coordinates" but that's just because 
they have fewer letters.)

I've left the crs definition vague, since I care less about how that is 
handled.

The changes between RFC-001 and RFC-2 are summarized as: define what 
types of objects may be serializes as GeoJSON, get rid of the point as 
array of a single array business, get rid of the box as an array of two 
points business, get rid of the holes name, make all multi-part 
geometries more similar, and make all GeoJSON objects have a type.

I've updated the OpenLayers GeoJSON parser to read and write according 
to RFC-2.

You can paste the examples from the wiki into the parser to see what 
they look like rendered.

Examples: http://wiki.geojson.org/RFC-2#Examples
Parser: 
http://dev.openlayers.org/sandbox/tschaub/geojson/examples/geojson.html

Interested to hear any feedback.

Tim

A few notes:
- I'm sure there are typos.
- Though the OL example spits out only Feature type GeoJSON, it can 
read/write all types.
- A Box gets read in as a polygon in OL - so you don't get the same 
GeoJSON on the way out.
- If you get the "Bad GeoJSON" response, hit F12 or Ctrl-Shift-L to see 
a (potentially) more useful error message.



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