Instant OpenLayers Starter

Alessio Di Lorenzo, Giovanni Allegri

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781782165101
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Programming in JavaScript
• Index: Computer Science

In Detail

OpenLayers is an open source JavaScript web mapping library distinguished from other alternatives, like Leaflet or Google Maps APIs, because of its huge set of components. Having being on the scene for a long time, users can benefit from a large set of resources and documentations, and a wide and actively supportive community.

Instant OpenLayers Starter gives you the possibility to produce your first "real" web map without being an experienced programmer or a GIS specialist. It provides you with an overview of the most popular vector and raster data formats used to share spatial information on the Web. By the end of the book you will be able to amaze your boss with a brand new web map and a bag of skills to give life to your geodata.

Instant OpenLayers Starter guides you through a fast and effective journey of web mapping, to discover how easy it is to put maps in your web projects, from simple base maps to interactive geo mash-ups, Google Maps, OpenStreetmap, GeoRSS, Panoramio, and your data. Starting with a lot of geo-information sources and a powerful library, we will explore how to manage maps inside web pages using basic third-party base maps to the overlay of re-projected vector data, going through styling thematic data and data interaction.

Approach

Get to grips with a new technology, understand what it is and what it can do for you, and then get to work with the most important features and tasks.A quick and simple Starter to working with the OpenLayers JavaScript library architecture, helping you become productive with it in a very short time.

Who this book is for

Instant OpenLayers Starter is a book for web designers or GIS specialists with a basic knowledge of JavaScript, for learning how to create simple, embedded, and basic maps, or to build complex data analysis and data management RIAs.

Instant OpenLayers Starter

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Instant OpenLayers Starter

Copyright © 2013 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the authors, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: April 2013

Production Reference: 1190413

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

35 Livery Street

Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78216-510-1

www.packtpub.com

Credits

Authors

Alessio Di Lorenzo

Giovanni Allegri

Reviewer

Antonio Santiago

Acquisition Editor

Usha Iyer

Commissioning Editor

Neha Nagwekar

Technical Editor

Prasad Dalvi

Project Coordinator

Amigya Khurana

Proofreader

Joel T. Johnson

Production Coordinator

Melwyn Dsa

Cover Work

Melwyn Dsa

Cover Image

Abhinash Sahu

About the Authors

Alessio Di Lorenzo is a Marine Biologist and an MSc in Geographical Information Systems and Remote Sensing. Now he is living in Pescara, Italy, the place where he was born in October 1979.

One fine day, looking for suitable tools to represent and analyze the environmental phenomena, he discovered GIS and decided that it was worthwhile to investigate the topic. By mixing his personal interest in computer science, open source software, and programming languages with the spatial knowledge, he has concentrated more and more on Web Mapping and Web GIS.

Nowadays, he works as a consultant and trainer for local and central governments and various organizations. Most of his experience concerns the use of geospatial and web technologies to study and manage data from emergency and monitoring plans in the environmental, veterinary, and public health fields. He is author and co-author of articles concerning GIS for various scientific papers and for the TANTO blog.

When not having fun with maps and connected stuff, he likes to spend his time swimming and riding his mountain bike or his motorcycle!

Giovanni Allegri has a degree in Earth Science from the Centre for Geotechnologies (CGT) at the University of Siena (Italy). He works as a GIS freelance consultant and analyst for public agencies and private companies. His work fields range from spatial data modeling and GIS analysis, to GIS/WebGIS software development and cartography.

He holds courses on spatial DB design and management, GIS analysis, and WebGIS development, mainly based on free and open source technologies.

I want to thank my colleagues in the editorial staff of the Italian blog TANTO, for sustaining the authoring of the current work. I also want to say thanks to the OpenLayers community and the other GFOSS communities for the precious work in spreading and sharing an open knowledge for geography and geomatics.

About the Reviewer

Antonio Santiago has more than ten years of experience in Computer Science, designing and implementing systems.

Since the beginning of his professional life, his experience has always been related to the world of the meteorology, working for different companies as an employee and freelance. He is experienced in development of systems to collect, store, transform, analyze, and visualize data and is actively interested on any GIS-related technology, with preference for data visualization.

As a restless mind, which is mainly experienced in the Java ecosystem, he also has worked actively with many related web technologies. He is always looking to improve the client side of web applications.

He is a firm believer of Software Engineering practices. He is an enthusiast of agile methodologies involving customers as a main key for the project’s success.

Antonio is also the author of the OpenLayers Cookbook by Packt Publishing.

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Chapter 1. Instant OpenLayers Starter

Welcome to the Instant OpenLayers Starter. This book has been especially created to provide you with all of the information that you need to set up OpenLayers. You will learn the basics of OpenLayers, get started with building your first web map, and discover some tips and tricks for using OpenLayers.

This book contains the following sections:

So, what is OpenLayers? explains what OpenLayers actually is, what you can do with it, and why it’s so great.

Installation discusses how to download and install OpenLayers with the minimum fuss and then set it up so that you can use it as soon as possible.

Quick start – Creating your first web map shows you how to perform one of the core tasks of OpenLayers; creating web maps. Follow the steps discussed in this section to create your own web map, which will be the basis of most of your work with OpenLayers.

Top features you need to know about illustrates how to perform six tasks with the most important features of OpenLayers. By the end of this section, you will be able to add image and vector overlays, add interaction controls, display attributes information, and buil...

Table of contents

• Instant OpenLayers Starter