Importer Enhancements

As the site gets more traffic and real-world use, will will need to keep enhancing our importer. Currently users import data into MapStory either by creating an empty layer with a schema, or by uploading CSV or Shapefiles. We need to build on this basic workflow in the following ways:

Additional Vector Data Formats

Add supprot for the following Vector Formats:

• GeoJSON *
• KML *
• GeoPackage
• GML

* already supported by importer, however client side default styling, etc, does not support multiple geometries

Data Streams and Remote Feeds

The MapStory importer should support users in accessing streaming data, as well as data manually uploaded via the MapStory importer. Remote data feed priorities include: GeoRSS; KML network feeds; GeoSMS

Raster

Raster StoryLayers should be made possible by the upload of:

• GeoTiffs
  • Rasters are more like another form of base map. When added to composer, there should be an option to "view for duration of chapter" or "view for a specific length of time (start to end).
• Sequence of GeoTiffs with temporal metadata
• Warper Exports
  • Both temporal sequence and stand-alone.
  • Establish seamless sync between warper.mapstory.org and MapStory Importer so that georeferenced images don't have to be downloaded from warper and re-uploaded to mapstory but instead can be added to mapstory in a single process.
  • Integrate logins across mapstory.org, warper, and other tools

When series of time formatted rasters are uploaded, the importer should handle a gZIP or ZIP of these files.

Additional consideration should be given to other Raster formats such as ADRG/EDRG, ERDAS .IMG files, and USGS .dgr when time and user-requests allow.

Thumbnails

• Add animated-thumbnail auto-generator for StoryLayers and MapStory thumbnails
• Animated thumbnails should appear in social media cards as well
• once auto-generated animated thumbnails are in palce, the user-upload feature of thumbnails should be removed

Temporal component of Importer

Importer should enforce that geometries and incoming data have either well formatted time attributes or provide a mechanism to add a time field to the schema at import.

Null time values should also be allowed durring import.

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