Is there a GIS "Hello World" Equivalent? [closed]

Question

Is there the equivalent of the "Hello World" program for GIS applications?

I am looking to become more familiar with the development of GIS applications. What are the popular (and free/low cost) tutorials and/or sample applications that would help someone get started? Are there any books that you would consider essential for beginner GIS developers?

Samoyedic

Answer 1

You could start with some basic desktop mapping software like uDig or Quantum GIS. And download some Shape files.

From there you might want to take a look at PostGIS. For web development start with MapServer and OpenLayers.

Would also be worth taking a look at the book Mapping Hacks.

Stupendous

The OP would do well to check out gis.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/tutorial – Musso

Answer 2

Perhaps these books from Pragmatic Programmers could help you:

Desktop GIS: Mapping the Planet with Open Source Tools

_{(source: pragprog.com)}

GIS for Web Developers: Adding Where to Your Web Applications

_{(source: pragprog.com)}

Seena

Answer 3

Let's give it a try:

Polylines:

(   0, 100), ( 0,     0), (   0,  50), (  80,  50), (  80,   0), (  80, 100)
( 180, 100), ( 100, 100), ( 100,  50), ( 140,  50), ( 100,  50), ( 100,   0), ( 180,   0)
( 200, 100), ( 200,   0), ( 280,   0)
( 300, 100), ( 300,   0), ( 380,   0)
( 400,  50), ( 440, 100), ( 480,  50), ( 440,   0), ( 400,  50)
( 600, 100), ( 620,   0), ( 640,  50), ( 660,   0), ( 680, 100)
( 700,  50), ( 740, 100), ( 780,  50), ( 740,   0), ( 700,  50)
( 800,   0), ( 800, 100), ( 880,  75), ( 800,  50), ( 880,   0)
( 900, 100), ( 900,   0), ( 980,   0)
(1000,   0), (1000, 100), (1080,  50), (1000,   0)    

Gamages

Can you explain more. How to compile/interpret and what it's output should be? – Triplicity

I think I see what you did there. – Curse

Well, it is hello world in GIS ;-) – Gamages

Answer 4

If your company has ESRI software I'd recommend getting ArcMap, opening up the VBA editor and copying and pasting a few simple code samples from the help files.

If you don't have desktop software try out http://openlayers.org/ the open source equivalent of Google Maps. It has a nice API and samples.

I'd say the equivalent of "Hello World" in GIS is clicking on a map and popping up a message box with the latitude and longtitude of the click.

Gilletta

Answer 5

Are you interesting in desktop based GIS development or web based?

ESRI is the leader in this space. www.esri.com poke around on their site.

The Resources section of the website has lots of information. You can play around with the JavaScript API on the site and use data that they host to play with. There are several getting started sections and walk throughs here.

http://resources.esri.com/gateway/index.cfm

Here is a link to the JavaScript API resource site http://resources.esri.com/arcgisserver/apis/javascript/arcgis/index.cfm?fa=home

You can download ArcExplorer and work with that. I think it is customizable. You can view shapefiles and geodatabases with it. http://resources.esri.com/arcgisexplorer/900/index.cfm?fa=home

Medial

Answer 6

Rectangular <-> geographic coordinate transformation

I feel like sooner or later every generalist GIS developer has to do project coordinates on their own, for whatever reason. Given a latitude, longitude pair and a bitmap image representing the surface of the Earth (or a part of it), locate the geographic coordinates in the image - or vice-versa, get the geographic coordinates for a particular pixel in the image. The Lambert cylindrical projection is probably the easiest place to start, since the math is comparatively simple and equal-area projections are all the rage these days, but the spherical Mercator projection is not much harder and still in common use, especially on the web.

After this you can go in many different directions - some projections involve more complex math, or you can keep using simpler mathematical models but complicate the shape of the Earth (It's an ellipsoid! No, it's a potato!), affine and perspective transformations, or all sorts of other great stuff. But ultimately, GIS is about coordinates, and you often have to make different coordinates talk to each other, so I think that's a good place to start.

Electroencephalogram

Answer 7

ESRI Their tools are definitely not cheap, but they are widely used. They do have good learning resources and tutorial materials, although many do assume you already have their products.

Involuted

Answer 8

You should surely start with QuantumGis (QGIS). It's open source, relatively fast and simple to use. Download any shapefile from web, make sure you can interpret it yourself (for example shapefile with boundaries of European countries). Think what can you do with the data, or what you want to do. Then I suggest you take some basic Python (GDAL, Shapely, Fiona) tutorials and in the end conclude it with POSTGis and MapServer. I'm not saying you should learn it all in one day, one month or one year, take your time and make sure you understand everything. I'm suggesting the stuff like that cause that's how I started and it worked.

Phinney

automating-gis-processes.github.io/CSC18 i forgot the link, sorry, i found this very usefull if you are familiar with Python or if you want to be familiar with Python. – Phinney

Answer 9

Starting with GIS Development: A Simple Guide

Learn Automation: Begin with ArcGIS and QGIS by exploring Model Builder for automating GIS processes.

Explore Software Customization: Start customizing GIS tools using ArcPy (for ArcGIS) and PyQGIS (for QGIS).

Dive into Web Development: Get started with GeoServer for serving spatial data and PostgreSQL with PostGIS for spatial databases.

Focus on Data Visualization: Use OpenLayers or Leaflet to create interactive maps and visualize spatial data.

Powwow

Answer 10

Try out http://code.google.com/p/tf-net/ (Topology Framework .NET) and browse through the introductory topics. Though it's .NET oriented, it may give you a glimpse into basic GIS tasks:

• Spatial predicates (based on the DE-9IM model)
• Overlay functions (intersection, difference, union, symmetric difference)
• Buffer
• Convex hull
• Area and distance functions
• Topological validity checking
• Coordinate systems manipulation (transformations)
• Topological graphs manipulation
• Generic geometry I/O support: WKT, WKB, GML, SHP ...

Dvinsk

This isn't much of an answer - just a link. – Tess

Quite correct, HTML is full of them. Anyways, above link points to an open source .NET implementation of basic and advanced GIS functions, like spatial predicates, overlays, buffers, convex hulls, and such. A good read for a beginner. – Dvinsk

I'm not say it isn't - I'm just saying that as a rule, StackOverflow doesn't like link-only posts. If you could maybe talk a bit about the material on that page, and provide the link as a reference, it would be a great improvement. – Tess

The rule is that the post should, in most cases, be able to stand alone without the link. – Tess

I agree. Sorry for not providing more elaborate info, the topic is huge. Fixed (a bit). – Dvinsk