Stream: geospatial

Topic: search results on a map

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Jan 13 2025 at 15:42):

Check out this new video demo by Paul Boon that shows search results on a map: https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse-frontend/issues/580

Julian Schneider (Jul 13 2026 at 15:29):

This looks really cool!! :smile: I've checked out the live instance as well as the related community call recording, to understand the state of the map, because I'd love to reuse this map for our installation, if able :+1:

Short description of this installation as context:
We're indexing agricultural datasets from various sources, some of them come with geospatial information, others don't. The installation uses a React-based frontend, which fetches its search results from the Dataverse search API. In that Dataverse instance, the geospatial metadata block's bounding box is being filled out, so we have the Solr field geolocation available. So, since we're using React and the standard geospatial metadata block, I assume that integrating this in our frontend is a very similar task as integrating it in the new official SPA.

If I understand correctly, the custom footer and jQuery-based strategy was only intended for integration in the classic frontend. Do you already have a recommendation for how the map could be reused in the SPA context? @Paul Boon

Also, in the community call, there were the following open points being considered. I would be interested in their status:

• the map displays points instead of bounding boxes, which makes it hard to populate from geolocation
• the coordinates were in a different format than what the geospatial metadata block uses
• due to performance considerations, the map retrieves ~100 results by default and per "get more" action, but there were already ideas to speed up the map

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Jul 13 2026 at 15:31):

@Julian Schneider I'm glad you like it! You work with newly-minted core dev @Vera Clemens right? Have you two talked about this yet? :smile:

Julian Schneider (Jul 13 2026 at 15:34):

Yes she's aware! The frontend of the instance I'm working on being developed in tandem with her and Johannes' Health Study Hub. Potentially, their instance may also include geospatial information in the future, but not yet.

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Jul 13 2026 at 15:38):

Cool. Well, to answer, I hope, we have no plans to implement this in JSF. We'd like to have it in the SPA some day. That's what https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse-frontend/issues/580 is about. I hope this makes sense!

Paul Boon (Jul 14 2026 at 14:27):

@Julian Schneider Great that you like it!

For the SPA you should use React code for getting the Leaflet map on the page. Should not be to complicated, must be an example at the Leaflet site that shows how to do that.
The next thing would be to inspect that code that construct the search query, it tries to make it in sync with the page content, that is allready from a search result. It might be better to somehow wire this into the SPA code, so you don't have to do that 'hacking'.
Extracting the coordinates from the result should not be much different. Transforming might be a bit more involved, but it is somethng that we had to do for our Dutch 'Rijksdriehoeks' coordinates.

The main display, which is the one you get on the search results page (on a Map 'tab' in our Dataverse), shows only baloons, but with a seperate color for points and boxes. If you have many results, both points and boxes that would become a mess (selection especially) on the screen, so we just show baloons.
We also show a map on the top of the Dataset landingpage, where we do have the boundingboxes, because it is unlikly that you have many and at some point you do want to see the extend of those boxes.

The performance issues; I forgot all the details, it had to do with extra checks being made for the permissions if I remember correctly. Maybe that Jim still knows a bit about it, he had some ideas about improving it.

Paul Boon (Jul 14 2026 at 14:35):

@Julian Schneider BTW, I would just throw that code at Claude and make it work, with some guidance ;-)

Julian Schneider (Jul 22 2026 at 15:57):

Thanks for the input! @Paul Boon @Philip Durbin 🚀 I've started working on a react-leaflet implementation of this map in the SPA, and shared the current WIP version in this PR: https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse-frontend/pull/1027. Now I'll now be out-of-office for 2 weeks, see you then!

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Jul 22 2026 at 16:11):

@Julian Schneider great screenshot!

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Jul 22 2026 at 16:19):

@Amber Leahey @Ben Lewis @Ellen K @Juan Pablo Tosca Villanueva @Cheng Shi check this out! ^^

Ben Lewis (Jul 22 2026 at 19:51):

Very cool! Thanks Paul, Julian, and Phil!! Will check this out

Last updated: Aug 18 2026 at 08:27 UTC