GeoJSON Global

What is it?

The GeoJSON Global is a site you use to see your GeoJSON resource on the map.

Provide any GeoJSON resource on your site, and GeoJSON Global will able to show it on the map.

The secure mirror shows only secured GeoJSON content got from the HTTPs resource. The insecure mirror can show both, secured (HTTPs) and insecured (HTTP) GeoJSON content.

Note the Google Chrome browser can fall into the infinite redirection loop requesting insecure mirror. If it happens, go to chrome://flags, find the option Experimental QUIC protocol and switch it off explicitly.

Map content

Any content shown on the map is not owned, controlled, maintained, or related to the GeoJSON Global site in any form.

Alpha version

The site is under construction, and many options are not yet provided, see also Planned features

How to use?

Provide your GeoJSON content

Providing GeoJSON content from the network

Your GeoJSON content should be available on some HTTP resource referred by the valid URL.

The browser restricts access to the content outside of the current domain, so your URL should conform to the following rules:

• the URL of the GeoJSON content should have the same HTTP schema as a site where it can be shown. If the GeoJSON content is insecure, i.e. available only by the HTTP (not HTTPs) URL, please use the insecure mirror of the GeoJSON Global site. The secured GeoJSON content available by HTTPs is visible on both, secure and insecure site mirrors.
• the server providing your URL should provide CORS headers in response to the OPTIONS request, f.e.:
  • Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
  • Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET
• other CORS headers may be also required if the server requires the request authorization, read CORS documentation, f.e.:
  • Access-Control-Allow-Headers: origin, Authorization
  • Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true

The request for the GeoJSON content is never issued by the GeoJSON Global site backend, but directly from the browser page instead. So, you can provide your content from the intranet, or even from the localhost, but only you can see such content on the GeoJSON Global map page, definitely.

Providing GeoJSON content directly from the URL

You can use Data URL to provide GeoJSON data directly. The simplest form of such URL is:

data:,{content}

where {content} is a GeoJSON content which you would like to provide.

The space between colon and comma characters of the Data URL is used to provide MIME Type information and is not required for the GeoJSON Global. There are also options available to provide the content base64-encoded, see the information in the Data URL documentation

Create a proper reference to your GeoJSON content resource

Using input string

The input string above the map can be used to pass a GeoJSON URL. Write your GeoJSON URL to the input string and press Enter, the GeoJSON will be downloaded from the URL and shown on the map.

Directly in the hash section

Use the hash section of the GeoJSON Global site root URL to pass your parameters:

• lat (optional) - latitude to focus on
• lon (optional) - longitude to focus on
• zoom (optional) - zoom level (0-18) for the start zoom of the map
• url, url1, url2, … - GeoJSON content URLs to be shown on the map (use a continuous range of indexes)

Notice special characters in the url* parameter values should be masqueraded, f.e.:

http://geojson.global#url=http%3A//127.0.0.1%3A8000/my-geojson.json

You can use input string as described before to see, how your GeoJSON URL will look in the hash section.

The content authorization

You can restrict access to your GeoJSON content using some popular technigues:

• coookies. Your server can provide session or special cookies which can be used to allow the user access (some additional CORS headers may be required, as explained above)
• tokens. Your server can provide access tokens which can be included into the GeoJSON content URL to allow the user access

Any other way using pure GET request to receive the GeoJSON content is available. We don’t recommend to send plain passwords in the GET request, although it is also possible.

Notice all GeoJSON URLs are resided in the the hash section of the GeoJSON Global URL. This section is never sent to the network while requesting from the browser.

Sharing the content using the dynamic URL hash

The hash section of the URL reflects the current state of the map. When you change zoom, or coordinates, or any other state variables of the map, the hash changes it’s content correspondingly.

Use permalink at the left bottom corner of the map, or grab a link directly from the address line of the browser to share your map among others.

Error reporting

All errors during the GeoJSON URL processing are reported to the user by the UI. You also can open a browser console to see error details, not available by the UI.

Extensions of the GeoJSON

Attributed GeoJSON

The GeoJSON may contain the attribution property in the root element, whose content is reflected at the bottom right corner of the map.

GeoJSON Feature styling

The Feature GeoJSON element can have some special properties determining marker, line, and area style. Some of them are common with MapBox Simplestyle:

• marker options describing marker pin and icon on it:
  • title - title popped up above the marker when the mouse point is over the marker
  • marker-color - color of the marker pin
  • marker-shape - shape of the marker pin, circle, square, star, or penta
  • marker-opacity - opacity of the marker, from 0.0 (invisible or absent), to 1.0 (totally opaque)
  • marker-symbol - symbol on the marker, the available names you can see in the list of Font Awesome icons, or GetBootstrap icons depending on icon-prefix, see below
  • icon-color - color of the marker icon (figure on the pin)
  • icon-prefix - prefix selecting the marker icon source, fa or absent for Font Awesome icons, or bi for GetBootstrap icons
  • marker-anchor - anchor of the marker, not yet implemented
  • marker-size - size of the marker (small, medium, or large) not yet implemented
  • marked-div - allows you to define totally custom marker, ignoring all other marker properties
• stroke options describing a line:
  • stroke - color of the line
  • stroke-opacity - opacity of the line, from 0.0 (totally transparent), to 1.0 (totally opaque)
  • stroke-width - width of the line
  • stroke-linecap - figure of line ending, butt, round, or square as described here
  • stroke-linejoin - figure of two lines connection, arcs, bevel, miter, miter-clip, or round as described here
  • stroke-dasharray - the way how to fill the line by dashes, a string containing a list of lengths, or persentages, separated by space, as described here
  • stroke-dashoffset - the offset from the line start to start the dash array as described here
• fill options describing an area:
  • fill - color of the area filling
  • fill-opacity - opacity of the area filling, from 0.0 (totally transparent), to 1.0 (totally opaque)
  • fill-rule - describes a filling rule, nonzero or evenodd, determinimg filling of holes in the area, as explained here

Feature Collection default style

The non-standard properties member of the FeatureCollection GeoJSON element, if present, is inherited by all Features inside this collection. The Feature-specific properties override values inherited from the FeatureCollections properties with the same names.

Planned features

Auto-location of the overlay

Selecting the overlay changes map view to fit the window to its boundaries

Styled GeoJSON

The GeoJSON Feature style may be determined by the separate style JSON depending on the Feature property values.

Context menu

The GeoJSON elements may have it’s own custom context menu with links changing the current map content or opening a separate page.

Dynamic GeoJSON

The websocket resource instead of HTTP may be provided by the customer, to have a dynamic GeoJSON resource changing its content eventually.

GeoJSON reference collection

New non-standard GeoJSON element types Reference and ReferenceCollection are introduced to have complex GeoJSON recursively referring other GeoJSON resources.

Site embedding

The GeoJSON Global map can be embedded into the customer’s site page.

Customizing map widgets

Allows adding, removing, or customizing map widgets while embedding.

Tile overlays

Allows to customize list of tile overlays, removing or adding your own tile overlay resources additionally to GeoJSON overlays.

Custom map background layer

Allows to customize a list of background layers, removing or adding your own background tile resources.