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https://github.com/mapbox/geobuf
A compact binary encoding for geographic data.
https://github.com/mapbox/geobuf
Last synced: about 2 months ago
JSON representation
A compact binary encoding for geographic data.
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/mapbox/geobuf
- Owner: mapbox
- License: isc
- Created: 2014-07-14T20:27:58.000Z (over 10 years ago)
- Default Branch: master
- Last Pushed: 2022-01-17T20:04:08.000Z (almost 3 years ago)
- Last Synced: 2024-05-17T02:42:09.808Z (7 months ago)
- Language: JavaScript
- Homepage:
- Size: 122 KB
- Stars: 951
- Watchers: 138
- Forks: 84
- Open Issues: 33
-
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
- Changelog: CHANGELOG.md
- License: LICENSE
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README
# Geobuf
[](https://travis-ci.org/mapbox/geobuf)
Geobuf is a compact binary encoding for geographic data.
Geobuf provides _nearly lossless_ compression of GeoJSON data
into [protocol buffers](https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/).
Advantages over using GeoJSON alone:
- **Very compact**: typically makes GeoJSON 6-8 times smaller.
- 2-2.5x smaller even when comparing gzipped sizes.
- **Very fast encoding and decoding** — even faster than native JSON parse/stringify.
- Can accommodate any GeoJSON data, including extensions with arbitrary properties.
The [encoding format](geobuf.proto) also potentially allows:
- Easy **incremental parsing** — get features out as you read them,
without the need to build in-memory representation of the whole data.
- **Partial reads** — read only the parts you actually need, skipping the rest.
Think of this as an attempt to design a simple, modern Shapefile successor
that works seamlessly with GeoJSON.
Unlike [Mapbox Vector Tiles](https://github.com/mapbox/vector-tile-spec/),
it aims for nearly lossless compression of datasets — without tiling, projecting coordinates,
flattening geometries or stripping properties.
Note that the encoding schema is **not stable yet** —
it may still change as we get community feedback and discover new ways to improve it.
"Nearly" lossless means coordinates are encoded with precision of 6 digits after the decimal point (about 10cm).
#### Sample compression sizes
Data | JSON | JSON (gz) | Geobuf | Geobuf (gz)
------------------- | --------: | --------: | -------: | ----------:
US zip codes | 101.85 MB | 26.67 MB | 12.24 MB | 10.48 MB
Idaho counties | 10.92 MB | 2.57 MB | 1.37 MB | 1.17 MB
## API
### encode
```js
var buffer = geobuf.encode(geojson, new Pbf());
```
Given a GeoJSON object and a [Pbf](https://github.com/mapbox/pbf) object to write to,
returns a Geobuf as `UInt8Array` array of bytes.
In [email protected] or later, you can use `Buffer.from` to convert back to a buffer.
### decode
```js
var geojson = geobuf.decode(new Pbf(data));
```
Given a [Pbf](https://github.com/mapbox/pbf) object with Geobuf data, return a GeoJSON object. When loading Geobuf data over `XMLHttpRequest`, you need to set `responseType` to [`arraybuffer`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/XMLHttpRequest/responseType).
## Install
Node and Browserify:
```bash
npm install geobuf
```
Browser build CDN links:
- https://unpkg.com/[email protected]/dist/geobuf.js
- https://unpkg.com/[email protected]/dist/geobuf-dev.js
Building locally:
```bash
npm install
npm run build-dev # dist/geobuf-dev.js (development build)
npm run build-min # dist/geobuf.js (minified production build)
```
## Command Line
```bash
npm install -g geobuf
```
Installs these nifty binaries:
* `geobuf2json`: turn Geobuf from `stdin` or specified file to GeoJSON on `stdout`
* `json2geobuf`: turn GeoJSON from `stdin` or specified file to Geobuf on `stdout`
* `shp2geobuf`: given a Shapefile filename, send Geobuf on `stdout`
```bash
json2geobuf data.json > data.pbf
shp2geobuf myshapefile > data.pbf
geobuf2json data.pbf > data.json
```
Note that for big files, `geobuf2json` command can be pretty slow, but the bottleneck is not the decoding,
but the native `JSON.stringify` on the decoded object to pipe it as a string to `stdout`.
On some files, this step may take 40 times more time than actual decoding.
## See Also
* [geojsonp](https://github.com/springmeyer/geojsonp) — the prototype that led to this project
* [pygeobuf](https://github.com/pygeobuf/pygeobuf) — Python implementation of Geobuf
* [twkb](https://github.com/TWKB/Specification) — a geospatial binary encoding that doesn't support topology
and doesn't encode any non-geographic properties besides `id`
* [vector-tile-spec](https://github.com/mapbox/vector-tile-spec)
* [topojson](https://github.com/mbostock/topojson) — an extension of GeoJSON that supports topology
* [WKT and WKB](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well-known_text) — popular in databases
* [EWKB](http://postgis.refractions.net/docs/using_postgis_dbmanagement.html#EWKB_EWKT) — a popular superset of WKB