GeoJSON is a geospatial data format designed for use on the web. Like other JSON formats, it is a lightweight data-interchange format that is easy for a computer to parse, but is also relatively human-readable. JSON is based on JavaScript Object Notation, but is also used across most other programming languages.
GeoJSON provides a standard way to add geospatial location information to JSON. It was originally released in 2008 as a community-developed specification, and was quickly adopted by many geospatial projects. It was later revised to become an official IETF specification (RFC 7946) in 2016. One of the major changes was that, whereas the 2008 allowed arbitrary coordinate systems, the 2016 standard mandates WGS84 (lon, lat) coordinates.
Example of a point in GeoJSON:
{
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "Point",
"coordinates": [ -122.17, 37.428 ]
},
"properties": {
"name": "Stanford University",
"founded": 1885
}
}
Example of a polygon in GeoJSON:
{
"type": "Feature",
"properties": {
"name": "Mitchell Earth Sciences Building",
"this is a *really long* property name!": "but just because \"you can\" doesn't mean you should"
},
"geometry": {
"type": "Polygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[ -122.172949, 37.426643 ],
[ -122.173051, 37.426349 ],
[ -122.172398, 37.426208 ],
[ -122.172302, 37.426498 ],
[ -122.172949, 37.426643 ]
]
]
}
}
Things to know about GeoJSON:
\"Next: QGIS