GeoDjango Shows Off Mapping Superpowers at DjangoCon
Location has become such so integral to our online lives, its nearly impossible to put a group of web geeks in the same room without talk turning to the latest mapping tech, GPS thingy or location-aware service. And you put a bunch of Django geeks in the same room, you get a great discussion about how to build geo-aware websites using Django.
On Saturday at DjangoCon, Justin Bronn showed off GeoDjango, an geodata-enabled branch of Django that lets you easily incorporate geographic data into your websites. It can do everything from generate simple maps to build entire location-based search sites requiring extensive use of geo-enabled databases. GeoDjango is very flexible — Justin ran through several ways it can be used to display any kind of geographic content on a Django site.
The first Django site Justin built was Houstoncrimemaps.com, a map-based mashup site that displays crime data from Houston’s police department. It’s based on the same idea as Chicagocrime.org (which is now defunct — creator Adrian Holovaty shut it down when he launched the similar but much more powerful EveryBlock). But when Justin started building his site, he just kept piling on the mapping and spatial database interaction features until the GeoDjango project eventually emerged.
During his tech talk, Justin used GeoDjango’s admin interface to generate a map simply by plugging in Mountain View’s ZIP code. GeoDjango can also plot points from GeoRSS feeds or any scrapable data sources based on open web standards.
Other sites using GeoDjango include Burningman Earth, a site for the Burningman community to map their installations in the desert, and the real estate listings sites Backyardpost and Tampabay.com.
For more about GeoDjango, check out the project’s wiki.