Book Image

Python Geospatial Development - Third Edition

By : Erik Westra
Book Image

Python Geospatial Development - Third Edition

By: Erik Westra

Overview of this book

Geospatial development links your data to locations on the surface of the Earth. Writing geospatial programs involves tasks such as grouping data by location, storing and analyzing large amounts of spatial information, performing complex geospatial calculations, and drawing colorful interactive maps. In order to do this well, you’ll need appropriate tools and techniques, as well as a thorough understanding of geospatial concepts such as map projections, datums, and coordinate systems. This book provides an overview of the major geospatial concepts, data sources, and toolkits. It starts by showing you how to store and access spatial data using Python, how to perform a range of spatial calculations, and how to store spatial data in a database. Further on, the book teaches you how to build your own slippy map interface within a web application, and finishes with the detailed construction of a geospatial data editor using the GeoDjango framework. By the end of this book, you will be able to confidently use Python to write your own geospatial applications ranging from quick, one-off utilities to sophisticated web-based applications using maps and other geospatial data.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Python Geospatial Development Third Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

About DISTAL


The DISTAL application will have the following basic workflow:

  1. The user starts by selecting the country they wish to work with:

  2. A simple map of the country is then displayed:

  3. The user selects a desired radius in miles and clicks on a point within the country:

  4. The system identifies all the cities and towns within the given radius of that point:

  5. Finally, the resulting features are displayed at a higher resolution for the user to view or print:

We are going to implement the DISTAL system as a series of CGI scripts. While this is simplistic and lacks the look and feel of a proper Google Maps-like "slippy map" interface, it allows us to concentrate on the core geospatial aspects of this application without getting bogged down in the complexity of building a full web application.