I’m excited to announce the release of WP-GeoMeta 0.3.4 today with GeoJSON importing!
The import functionality is pretty straightforward and should cover the most common import use cases. With it you can create new Posts or Users or update existing Posts or Users.
For updates you can select a JSON property and a Post (or User) field, and any existing Posts with that property value will be updated instead of duplicates being created.
You can also choose to ignore GeoJSON features that aren’t found, so that you don’t create new posts (or Users) but only update existing ones.
If your import needs are more complex, or you want to add spatial data to Taxonomies or Comments, you’ll still need to script that yourself, but hopefully this import tool will cover most of your bases.
The Status of WP-GeoMeta
I know it’s been a while since I posted. I’m not a terrific blogger and I’m not ready to promise to change. WP-
GeoMeta and related WordPress spatial projects continue to move forward though, mostly based on clients needs. The idea of using WordPress for spatial work seems to be growing. WP-GeoMeta has been downloaded over 300 times, and I promise I only represent about 30 of those.
I’ve also been contacted by people from around the globe asking for help and pointers — I haven’t been able to help everyone, but I’d done what I can and will continue to add additional documentation as I can and as requested.
I have started formulating plans for a mapping plugin which will take advantage of spatial meta data. I’m still taking another look at existing WP plugins to see if there isn’t one that I can integrate with instead of starting another one, but it’s not promising so far.
FOSS4G
Finally, I’m excited to say that I’ll be speaking about WordPress and GIS at FOSS4G in Boston this year!
My talk is titled Spatially enable WordPress with WP-GeoMeta-Lib and is scheduled for 5PM on Wednesday the 16th in Waterfront 1C.
Here’s my abstract:
WordPress is an open-source Content Management System (CMS) written in PHP and MySQL. It runs over 25%* of websites and lacks real spatial support. There are WordPress plugins that offer simple mapping but GIS has so much more to offer!
The core problem is that the WordPress API stores metadata in text fields, which are unsuitable for use with MySQL’s spatial functions. To use spatial data types developers must handle table, index, and query creation themselves and work outside of the WordPress API. Plugin developers tend to prefer using the API, though it limits what they can do with their data spatially.
WP-GeoMeta-Lib solves this issue by providing WordPress developers with API access to all spatial functionality that MySQL supports. WP-GeoMeta-Lib is a PHP library which uses the WordPress API to transparently intercept queries containing spatial metadata or spatial functions. It redirects those queries to custom metadata tables with spatial columns and indexes. Developers can now use the WordPress API to provide actual spatial functionality to their users.
WP-GeoMeta-Lib can easily be used to develop new plugins to collect, query, and analyze spatial data. I’ve even used it to turn WordPress into a WFS (Web Feature Service) server!
This presentation will show how WP-GeoMeta-Lib works, discuss why it is important for WordPress, and demonstrate some example plugins that use it.
WP-GeoMeta-Lib gives GIS tools to a quarter of the Internet, in software people are already using. Come get inspired by WP-GeoMeta-Lib and see what it can do for you!
If you’re going to be at FOSS4G, let’s chat! I’d love to meet some more WordPress GIS users!