Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
We want the API to handle all the hard stuff for us so we can concen-
trate on the custom functionality. That said, let's see what APIs are
available for the task.
Tools for Building a Custom Application
You can build a custom application in many ways. You can program
at a low-level against, for example, the GDAL/OGR or GRASS libraries.
One of the most time-consuming aspects of creating an application is
the user interface. If you've never done it before, you'll find that it takes
nearly as much code for the GUI as it does for the logic. If you are
going to write a desktop application, the first thing you should decide
is which GUI toolkit you will use.
Let's take a look at the GIS toolkits (APIs) available for us to work with.
If you're like me, cross-platform support is an important consideration,
although depending on the scope and target for the application, build-
ing on a single OS may be perfectly acceptable. In the list of toolkits that
follow, we'll point out the level of cross-platform support for each. This
is not a comprehensive list—there are likely other toolkits out there in
the wild.
Mapnik
Mapnik
1
is a toolkit for developing mapping applications using
C++ or Python. As of version 0.4, Mapnik runs on Linux, Mac OS
X, and Windows. Mapnik renders its output as an image. You can
likely integrate this with whatever GUI toolkit you desire, based
on your platform.
MapWinGIS
MapWinGIS
2
is an ActiveX control that you can use with any
programming language that supports ActiveX on Windows. This
includes Visual Basic, Delphi, VB .NET, and C# and the GUI ele-
ments that go along with them.
PyWPS
PyWPS
3
is the “Python Web Processing Service,” an implementa-
tion of the Web Processing Standard from the Open Geospatial
Consortium. PyWPS allows you to write applications using Python
and GRASS that work over the Web. Although it isn't a way to
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