Geospatial Drupal Adam Bramley Introduction Catalyst IT - 3+ - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Geospatial Drupal Adam Bramley

Introduction ● Catalyst IT - 3+ years ● Senior Drupal Developer ● Live public projects ○ www.health.govt.nz ○ www.transpower.co.nz ○ www.scmp.com ○ www.systemoperator.co.nz ○ www.elections.org.nz ● Twitter - @theacbramley ● Drupal - @acbramley ● NB: I’m not an Openlayers or Leaflet expert Geospatial Drupal

Why are you here? ● Help you decide which mapping library is for you. ○ Comparing a popular library to a new/upcoming library. ● Show you how easy it is to build something powerful without coding. ● Inspire you to build something epic with a glimpse at a more complex system using a map frontend. Geospatial Drupal

Background ● Worked with Openlayers when implementing a mapping solution for transpower.co.nz ● It was a love hate relationship. ● Upgrades broke things. ● When another project required a clever mapping solution we used our experience with Openlayers. Geospatial Drupal

Background ● Part of the way through, it was clear that Openlayers was not going to meet all of our requirements. ● We installed and configured Leaflet and, through black magic, all of our issues disappeared. Geospatial Drupal

IE Compatibility Accessibility (keyboard) Point/cluster styling Load times Geospatial Drupal

Clash of the Titans A comparative overview Module release Leaflet Openlayers July 2011 Sept 2007 version 1.1 version beta7 2k+ sites using 10k+ sites using 13k+ downloads 160k+ downloads Geospatial Drupal

Clash of the Titans A comparative overview Module/Library size Leaflet Openlayers Lib total: 360kB Lib total: 70MB Module total: 20kB Module total: 300kB Minified js: 125kB Minified js: ~800kB Geospatial Drupal

Clash of the Titans A comparative overview Dependencies Leaflet Openlayers ● Libraries ● Libraries ● Geofield (for our purposes) ● Proj4js (+lib) ○ geophp ● Ctools ● Views (for our purposes) ● File ● Image ● Geofield (for our purposes) ○ geophp ● Views (for our purposes) Geospatial Drupal

Clash of the Titans A comparative overview Misc. Leaflet Openlayers 8.x release No 8.x release Single layer (views) Infinite layers No external CDN option External CDN available Geospatial Drupal

Clash of the Titans A comparative overview Module implementation Leaflet Openlayers Plugins through other 2 files per “plugin” modules (.js and .inc) Geospatial Drupal

Module implementation Leaflet ● Extend functionality with other modules (clustering, url hashing etc). ○ http://drupal.org/project/leaflet_markercluster ○ http://drupal.org/project/leaflet_more_maps ● Admin interface = views interface ● Settings controlled via a hook. ● Some configuration moving into views. Geospatial Drupal

Module implementation Leaflet Hook configuration Geospatial Drupal

Map Administration Leaflet Views configuration Geospatial Drupal

Geospatial Drupal

Module implementation Openlayers ● Extend functionality with ctools plugins (a lot exist in the main module) ○ 1 js file, 1 .inc file ○ These can be behaviours (cluster, zoom to layer) or other things like layer types. ● Admin interface overload. ● Settings entirely through admin interfaces. Geospatial Drupal

Map Administration Openlayers Geospatial Drupal

Map Administration Openlayers Geospatial Drupal

Map Administration Openlayers Geospatial Drupal

Map Administration Openlayers Geospatial Drupal

Module implementation Openlayers Geospatial Drupal

Map Administration Openlayers Geospatial Drupal

Geospatial Drupal

Geospatial Drupal

Case Study - Ministry of Health Provider Regulatory Monitoring System ● Goal of project: provide more information to the public on certified providers for health care (public hospitals, rest homes, fertility clinics etc) ● Display certified providers on a filterable, searchable map with links to more details. Geospatial Drupal

Provider Regulatory Monitoring System XML (update/delete) POST Drupal Geospatial Drupal

Provider Regulatory Monitoring System Parse Entity Query Geospatial Drupal

Provider Regulatory Monitoring System ● Integration with ○ Apache Solr ○ Facetapi ○ Page Manager ○ Entity cache ○ Field API ○ Views ○ Pathauto Geospatial Drupal

Provider Regulatory Monitoring System DEMO http://www.health.govt.nz/resthomes Geospatial Drupal

Conclusions ● Leaflet’s slim and modern approach makes it easy for site builders to use and easy for developers to maintain and extend. ● Openlayers is good for complex, multi-layered maps without having to write any code. ○ Advanced layer types ○ External layer data ● Openlayers has a much steeper learning curve. Geospatial Drupal

Geospatial Drupal

Geospatial Drupal

Geospatial Drupal

Questions? adam@catalyst.net.nz Slides: http://bit.ly/1bU3s2V Geospatial Drupal