All GIS processing must start with geographic data, so we begin our application by building the capacity to interact with, load, and save various geographic file formats. This chapter is divided into a vector and raster section, and in each section, we will cover the following:
Firstly, we create a data interface which means understanding data structures and how to interact with them.
Secondly and thirdly, any format-specific differences are outsourced to separate loader and saver modules.
This is a lot of functionality to fit into one chapter, but by working your way through, you will learn a lot about data structures, and file formats, and end up with a solid foundation for your application.