GeoJSON Properties Editor

This is a tool to assist in editing the properties of a GeoJSON formatted file. At the moment it supports only collection of Features GeoJSON object as defined in RCF7946. The tool will convert the properties of the each feature in the collection to CSV format and output them to a file. After editing the properties with your CSV editor, the tool will create the GeoJSON file with the edited properties.

Usage

There are two steps involved, split and join. Split is the first part of the process which splits the GeoJSON file to two separate files, properties and features. Essentially it converts the properties to a CSV file which can then be processed with your tool of choice. The features is a JSON file which will be used in the join process to reconstruct the GeoJSON file.

Split

To split a GeoJSON file run:

python3 [FILE] --split

This will generate 2 files, gjpe_properties.csv and gjpe_features.json.

Note that you can change the prefix of the output files (the gjpe part, using --prefix PREFIX).

Editing the CSV

Open and edit the gjpe_properties.csv file. Rows can be removed which will cause the corresponding feature not to be included the the final GeoJSON file. New properties can be added by adding new columns. Do not to edit the split_id column's values, as this is the reference to the corresponding feature.

Join

To join the gjpe_properties.csv and gjpe_features.json files run:

python3 [FILE] --join

This will generate a single file gjpe_final.geojson which will contain the resulting GeoJSON collection of features.

Use the `--prefix PREFIX`` to change the prefix of the file.

The gjpe_properties.csv and gjpe_features.json files will be deleted. To keep the files you can pass the --keep argument.

Notes

There are several features that can improve both the functionality and usability of this tool. I will list them here, for future reference.

  • Improve the structure of the project
  • Make the errors verbose
  • Output a result status at the end (e.g. "... features joined, ... features removed")
  • Introduce an argument which will act as an edit hook. It will call the editor of choice to edit the CSV. This will enable the tool be called just once; it will split, call the CSV editor and then join the file

Any contributions are of course welcome!

Author

Demetris Stavrou