Book Image

OpenLayers 3: Beginner's Guide

By : Thomas Gratier, Paul Spencer, Erik Hazzard
Book Image

OpenLayers 3: Beginner's Guide

By: Thomas Gratier, Paul Spencer, Erik Hazzard

Overview of this book

<p>This book is a practical, hands-on guide that provides you with all the information you need to get started with mapping using the OpenLayers 3 library.</p> <p>The book starts off by showing you how to create a simple map. Through the course of the book, we will review each component needed to make a map in OpenLayers 3, and you will end up with a full-fledged web map application. You will learn the key role of each OpenLayers 3 component in making a map, and important mapping principles such as projections and layers. You will create your own data files and connect to backend servers for mapping. A key part of this book will also be dedicated to building a mapping application for mobile devices and its specific components.</p>
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
OpenLayers 3 Beginner's Guide
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Chapter 2. Key Concepts in OpenLayers

Now that we've seen the basics and made our first map with OpenLayers, let's take a step back and look at the big picture. OpenLayers is a software library based on an Object-oriented design principles, which means that it contains classes to encapsulate behavior, formal relationships between those classes, and standardized mechanisms for communication between objects. While OpenLayers contains many classes, there are just a few that form the foundation of the OpenLayers architecture. In this chapter, we will introduce these core components of the library and also two key concepts— events and observable properties—that are the basis for standardized communication between objects. Along the way, we'll use concrete examples and introduce some basic debugging techniques you can use to solve problems and explore the relationships between objects in a running application.

In this chapter, we will:

  • Illustrate the key classes that form the basis of the OpenLayers...