Book Image

Mastering OpenLayers 3

By : Gábor Farkas
Book Image

Mastering OpenLayers 3

By: Gábor Farkas

Overview of this book

OpenLayers 3 allows you to create stunning web mapping and WebGIS applications. It uses modern, cutting edge browser technologies. It is written with Closure Library, enabling you to build browser-independent applications without painful debugging ceremonies, which even have some limited fallback options for older browsers. With this guide, you will be introduced to the world of advanced web mapping and WebGIS. First, you will be introduced to the advanced features and functionalities available in OpenLayers 3. Next, you will be taken through the key points of creating custom applications with OpenLayers 3. You will then learn how to create the web mapping application of yours (or your company's) dream with this open source, expense-free, yet very powerful library. We’ll also show you how to make amazing looking thematic maps and create great effects with canvas manipulation. By the end of this book, you will have a strong command of web mapping and will be well on your way to creating amazing applications using OpenLayers 3.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Mastering OpenLayers 3
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Importing shapefiles


In the next example, called ch09_shp, we implement a method to import binary layers to our maps. Shapefile is an old specification to store vector data; however, it is still a very common and popular exchange format. It stores the geometry in a binary file, which has an shp MIME type. There are usually at least three more files along with the geometry. The shx file stores the shape indexes of the geometries in a binary format, providing an internal spatial indexing for faster lookups. The prj file is an ASCII file containing the projection string of the layer, while the dbf file is a dBASE database file containing attribute data. For this example to work, we will need at least the shp and dbf files of a shapefile.

Editing the HTML file

First, let's edit the HTML file of the example. In this example, we will implement an easy way and replace the function associated with the Add Vector Layer button in our layer tree. This way, we don't have to touch the GUI elements, just...