Thematic Earth

GCS I/O

Reading and Writing GCS Files

by Read Write Tools Feb 3, 2022

Abstract
The gcsio CLI tool is for reading and writing Geographic Coordinate System encoded files. It serves as a GIS exchange format for points, lines, and polygons that use longitude/latitude coordinates.

Motivation

The creation of this library and CLI was motivated by the desire to create GIS shape files that can be downloaded by website visitors in a highly compressed format.

Summary

The gcsio package is a command line utility wrapper for the gcslib core library.

Supported input and output formats comprise:

• geojson - RFC 7946
• gfe - Geographic Feature Encoding
• ice - Indexed Coordinate Encoding
• tae - Topological Arc Encoding
• gfebin - Geographic Feature Encoding binary
• icebin - Indexed Coordinate Encoding binary
• taebin - Topological Arc Encoding binary

The CLI uses the node.js filesystem package to read and write files using the API's exported functions.

See also: The gcslib core API parses and serializes to standard ECMAScript Strings and ArrayBuffers, with using the host computer's file system, so it can be used with client facing web pages that obtain data using HTTP.

Installation

The gcsio library may be installed directly from github or via NPM.

Node.js

To install and run the CLI:

[user@host]# npm install -g gcsio

[user@host]# gcsio --help

GCSCIO | Geographic Coordinate System I/O: reading from and writing to files with longitude/latitude coordinates
usage: gcscio --input=filename --output=filename [options]

options:
    --input=      filename to read from
    --output=     filename to write to
    --iformat=    input file format, optionally defaults to filename extension
    --oformat=    output file format, optionally defaults to filename extension
                    'geojson' RFC 7946
                    'gfe'     Geographic Feature Encoding
                    'gfebin'  Geographic Feature Encoding binary
                    'ice'     Indexed Coordinate Encoding
                    'icebin'  Indexed Coordinate Encoding binary
                    'tae'     Topological Arc Encoding
                    'taebin'  Topological Arc Encoding binary
    --accuracy=   digits to use for latitude and longitude coordinates 1 to 6 (1=11km, 2=1100m, 3=110m, 4=11m, 5=1.1m, 6=11cm)
    --dataset-id= identifier for the collection of points, lines or polygons
    --properties  which properties to include with each feature
                    a comma-separated list of property names, or the keyword 'none' or 'all'†
    --declarations  the name of a file which contains declarations of property names and property types
                    where each line is in the form "name=type"
                    Valid types are:
                      string, string[],
                      tinyInt, tinyUint, tinyInt[], tinyUint[]
                      shortInt, shortUint, shortInt[], shortUint[]
                      longInt, longUint, longInt[], longUint[]
                      float, float[]
                      json
    --version
    --help

† default

Metadata

Dependencies

This library depends on iolib and softlib .

Module exports

ES modules	true
Common JS	false

Suitability

Browser	API
node.js	CLI and API

Availability

	Documentation	Read Write Hub
	Source code	github
	Package installation	npm

License

The gcsio library is not freeware. After evaluating it and before using it in a public-facing website, eBook, mobile app, or desktop application, you must obtain a license from Read Write Tools as part of the thematic-earth DOM Component.

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