Motivation
Maps and geographical data have become an important part of the web. But there are few easy ways of generating maps without lots of javascript. Google's static maps API aims to solve this problem, but the results can be quite ugly.
Geoplot is a simple web service that focuses on making beautiful maps.
Using Geoplot
You can use GeoPlot wherever you can include images. Geoplot dynamically creates maps based on parameters you pass into the url.
Make a map
The API
Where possible, the API for GeoPlot follows that of Google Static Maps.
Parameters
- center
- (latitude, longitude) The center parameter specifies the focus of the map — the look-at point. In Geoplot, this is more of a guideline and thus this point may fall anywhere within the center section of the map.
- size
- (WidthxHeight) Specifies the size of the output image. At the moment, this also is only a guideline for Geoplot, however it is expected that the output will follow this more closely in future.
- zoom
- (0-2) How far in to zoom. Currently we only have imagery for zoom 0-2 inclusive.
- inset
- (0/1) Include an inset map? Only really makes sense for maps zoomed in more than 0.
- markers
- Check out the Google Api spec for more information. We ignore the size and alphanumeric character arguments.
But I want a dynamic map…
There are many tools to create dynamic maps already. Geoplot doesn't aim to compete with them. You might try:
Hotlinking
Feel free to hotlink to the service on low traffic websites with attribution. If you're going to have more than a few hundred requests per day, please contact me - if you only need specific images you can simply save them and host them from your own server.
If you're hosting the images yourself no attribution is necessary, but a linkback is always appreciated.
Please note that I make no guarantees about the availability of the service. I run this site as a hobby, and bandwidth isn't free. The API may change - check this page for updates.
Imagery
Geoplot uses satellite imagery from the Blue Marble data set from NASA's Earth Observatory.
Code
The source code is available on github. It probably won't work out of the box - there's a bunch of custom logging etc.
Like it?
I'd love to hear your thoughts. Drop me an email. If you'd like to buy me a drink to thank me there's a link at the top-left ;)
