[ckan-discuss] Next steps on datacatalogs.org?

Tue Oct 4 09:55:20 BST 2011

Hi all,

On 4 October 2011 09:41, Richard Cyganiak <richard at cyganiak.de> wrote:
> I'm sure there are. Google's just happens to be the one I'm familiar with. I'm happy to learn about others if anyone has some useful information to share.
Nominatim is an OpenStreetMap based geocoding service that offers
bounding box information (and even polygons).

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nominatim
http://open.mapquestapi.com/nominatim

E.g. For Barcelona (Note that there is still a Barcelona in
Cornualles, so extra work may be needed):
http://open.mapquestapi.com/nominatim/v1/search?format=json&json_callback=renderExampleBasicResults&q=barcelona&addressdetails=1&limit=3&viewbox=-1.99%2C52.02%2C0.78%2C50.94&exclude_place_ids=41697

> datacatalogs.org just offers a text field for spatial extent (and a second field that's supposed to give a machine-readable representation of spatial extent, but only gives instruction for country-level and upwards, thus not helping for the growing number of local catalogs). Geocoding on the text field is a low-hanging fruit.
> Do you have any advice for using the spatial field for sub-national regions?
I don't have access to the form so I can't see how the fields work,
but we recently pushed some features that allow you to assign a
geogrpahical extent automatically to a dataset if you provide a
GeoJSON representation in the 'spatial' extra. See e.g:

http://test.ckan.net/dataset/test-dataset-extent-point
http://test.ckan.net/dataset/test-dataset-extent-polygon

The trouble is of course, filling the field in the first place, but
here is where geocoding (or manually enter them if you are brave
enough) can be useful.

> My motivation is not republishing, but display on a map. It's also just bounding boxes, no polygons.
Any web site worth its name should have a map on it :)

>
> Best,
> Richard
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