proj.js

Update: since Oct 24 I am homeless and living in my van. I lost access to most of my computer hardware. The eviction from my home has been timed for maximum effect as I was not present when it happened. I have only a single set of clothes and no means to get anything else. Please, if you use my software, consider asking everyone in the geospatial community if they are taking part in this extortion and why.

This is proj.js - PROJ bindings for JavaScript with a native port for Node.js and WASM port for the browser using SWIG JSE.

This project is completely separate from proj4js which is a separate (and partial) reimplementation in JavaScript.

Current status

Alpha quality. Most basic functions work as intended. Mostly tested for leaks on the nominal code paths.

Keep in mind that I am only a very occasional user of a very small fraction of PROJ and my main interest is JavaScript bindings - Node.js and browser - for C/C++ projects. If you find methods that are not usable in the current version and submit unit tests for it, I will make them work.

Try it yourself

# Checkout from git
git clone https://github.com/mmomtchev/proj.js.git

# Install all the npm dependencies
cd proj.js
npm install
npx xpm install

# If you do not have SWIG JSE installed, download the SWIG generated files
# from a recent GHA run: https://github.com/mmomtchev/proj.js/actions
# (download swig-generated and unzip it in proj.js/swig)
mkdir -p swig && cd swig && unzip ~/Downloads/swig-generated.zip

# If you have SWIG JSE installed, generate the wrappers yourself
npm run swig

# Build the native version (requires a working C++ compiler)
npm run build:native

# Build the WASM version (requires emsdk in path)
npm run build:wasm

# Alternatively, get the compiled binaries from a recent GHA run
mkdir -p lib/binding && cd lib/binding && unzip -x ~/Downloads/native-ubuntu-latest-tiff.zip && unzip -x ~/Downloads/wasm-external-no_tiff.zip

# Run the tests (Node.js and browser)
npm test

# Run the web demo (should work on all OS if you have the WASM version)
cd test/browser && npx webpack serve --mode=production
# then open http://localhost:8030/

Usage

This package is a magickwand.js-style npm package with an automatic import that resolves to either the native module or the WASM module depending on the environment.

The following code will import the module:

import qPROJ from 'proj.js';
const PROJ = await qPROJ;
console.log(`proj.db is inlined: ${PROJ.proj_js_inline_projdb}`);
if (!PROJ.proj_js_inline_projdb) {
  const proj_db = new Uint8Array(await (await fetch(proj_db_url)).arrayBuffer());
  PROJ.loadDatabase(proj_db);
}

Node.js will pick up the native binary, while a modern bundler such as webpack or rollup with support for Node.js 16 exports will pick up the WASM module.

This requires ES6, Node.js 16 and a recent webpack or rollup. If using TypeScript, you will have to transpile to ES6. Most major web components were updated with those features in 2022.

If importing in a legacy CJS environment, you will be limited to using the native module in Node.js only:

const PROJ = require('proj.js/native');
console.log(`proj.db is inlined: ${PROJ.proj_js_inline_projdb}`);

When using the native module, proj.db is always external and automatically loaded from require.resolve('proj.js/lib/binding/proj/proj.db').

If using TypeScript, you will need to explicitly import the types in the PROJ namespace because PROJ is a variable:

import qPROJ from 'proj.js';
import type * as PROJ from 'proj.js';
const PROJ = await qPROJ;
console.log(`proj.db is inlined: ${PROJ.proj_js_inline_projdb}`);
if (!PROJ.proj_js_inline_projdb) {
  const proj_db = new Uint8Array(await (await fetch(proj_db_url)).arrayBuffer());
  PROJ.loadDatabase(proj_db);
}

WASM size considerations

When using WASM, proj.db can either be inlined in the WASM bundle or it can be loaded from an Uint8Array before use.

Currently, the bundle size remains an issue.

| Component | raw | brotli | brotli | --- | --- | --- | | proj.wasm w/ TIFF w/o proj.db | 8593K | 1735K | | proj.wasm w/o TIFF w/o proj.db | 7082K | 1302K | | proj.db | 9240K | 1320K |

It should be noted that while using -Os in emscripten can lead to a two-fold reduction of the raw size, the size of the compressed build will always remain the same. Sames goes for optimizing with binaryen - despite the very significant raw size gain, the compressed size gain is relatively insignificant.

curl support is enabled only in the native build - there is no simple solution to networking for the WASM build.

Linking with my own sqlite-wasm-http project to access a remote proj.db, using SQL over HTTP, is a very significant project that will further increase the bundle size to the point nullifying the gains from proj.db. It does not seem to be a logical option at the moment.

Currently the biggest contributor to raw code size is SWIG JSE which produces large amounts of identical code for each function. This may me improved in a future version, but bear in mind that SWIG-generated code has the best compression ratio. It is also worth investigating what can be gained from modularization of the SWIG wrappers and if it is really necessary to wrap separately all derived classes.

Performance

Initial crude benchmarks, tested on i7 9700K @ 3.6 GHz with the C++ quickstart:

Test	Native	WASM in V8
`DatabaseContext.create()`	0.171ms	16.316ms
`AuthorityFactory.create('string')`	0.071ms	0.44ms
`CoordinateOperationContext.create()`	0.052ms	0.397ms
`AuthorityFactory.create('EPSG')`	0.011ms	0.274ms
`createFromUserInput()`	0.283ms	0.617ms
`CoordinateOperationFactory.create().createOperations()`	0.588ms	1.885ms
`coordinateTransformer()`	0.29ms	19.117ms
`transform()`	0.014ms	0.234ms

Globally, the first impression is that the library is usable both on the backend and in the browser in fully synchronous mode. The only real hurdle at the moment remains the WASM bundle size.