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I have a client asking to develop a system which provides API to consume data from their POI, PA and MPA datasets (in shapefile).

Essentially more like the existing Google Maps or HERE Map API which provides endpoints for users to get information like road speed limit, shop information, postal boundary, property prices, etc.

So for example, if a user wants to get all the speed limit information from point A to B, the API would return the result back to the user with JSON.

What are my options to do this?

Should I develop the system from scratch by maybe converting the shapefile to GeoJSON and then develop the API, or is there any opensource/paid solution already made that perhaps I can just upload the shapefiles, define which data is searchable and define the response template?

nmtoken
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Zarul Zakuan
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  • This might help shed some light https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/8113/how-to-start-web-mapping many of the discussed packages are open source. – Michael Stimson Jun 11 '19 at 04:57
  • What do you want to do with the shapefile data? Make a map? Run analysis? On a web service? On local PCs? Output to PDF, or some other format? – Son of a Beach Jun 11 '19 at 05:06
  • the dataset has information like shop address, telephone number, operating hours, etc and I would like to have an API so that this information can be provided to private or government institutions. – Zarul Zakuan Jun 11 '19 at 05:10
  • Use a an OGC WFS – nmtoken Jun 11 '19 at 13:54
  • @nmtoken thank you. does this mean I have to develop the API from scratch based on this standard? Is there any solutions that can provide this capability? – Zarul Zakuan Jun 11 '19 at 14:39
  • There's loads of software that can give you an WFS out of the box – nmtoken Jun 11 '19 at 14:44
  • @nmtoken Thank you for the tip. I learnt about WFS and WMS. So WFS is just a data layer and WMS is an map image layer right? So how do I provide these layers via Rest API? – Zarul Zakuan Jun 11 '19 at 15:11
  • Most REST APIs are not restful, (don't comply with HATEOAS), so really let's not go there. If you want a service that can take a shapefile as input and give a GeoJSON response then you can do that with current WFS 2.0 specification, or if you want to have a more web API approach wait for WFS 3.0 / OGC API Features. A WMS takes vector &/or raster inputs and provides some map image/video/vector map tile response. A WFS takes vector input and gives vector output – nmtoken Jun 12 '19 at 13:45
  • @nmtoken thank you. i have recently discovered geonode. and i have read that wms is more secure than wfs. is that correct? – Zarul Zakuan Jun 12 '19 at 13:49
  • You can secure any service (restrict access to it), so it might depend what you mean by secure. If you mean can the user get at your data, then yes, WFS gives the data and WMS gives a representation or generalization of the data. – nmtoken Jun 12 '19 at 14:39
  • @nmtoken i mean by restrict access to it. thank you sir. how do i make comments as answer to this post? – Zarul Zakuan Jun 12 '19 at 14:42

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