/pilgrimdb.github.io

Pilgrim Routes Database

Primary LanguageCSS

Pilgrim Routes Database

A database of European pilgrimage routes for walkers and cyclists, with overview description and mapping.

As is usual with databases, both route details and the geographic features used in the mapping are in a fixed structure, and correct output depends on this. The database is designed to be communally maintained, using the Github infrastructure widely used by open-source software projects. The website is generated using Github's Jekyll software. See the contributing page for details on how to contribute.

Data structure

Each route has:

  • a unique alpha id
  • a title
  • one or more branches
  • a synopsis (printed above the description in the page, and supplied as description to search engines)
  • a lastChecked date
  • descriptive text in Markdown format

Each branch links two or more towns, and has a unique id.

A branch may or may not have mapping. Each mapped branch has one or more sections, generally roughly one day's walk. These sections correspond to GeoJSON features, and have the following attributes:

  • a unique numeric id (fid)
  • a title
  • distance in km
  • a reference to the route they belong to (some sections belong to >1 route)

In addition, there is a list of attributions for each mapped route/branch.

Directory structure

  • _routes/ (the routes collection): each route has its own page here, named id.md, generated as /id.html, containing an overview description and listing the id, title and branches in the front-matter
  • _data/features/ contains one file per feature/mapsection, listing the feature attributes
  • _data/attributions.yml is the list of attributions
  • _data/mapsections.yaml lists the fids for each route id
  • _data/places.yaml lists the towns referred to in the branch definitions, together with their Lon/Lat geographic coordinates
  • _includes/geometries/ contains one GeoJSON LineString geometry for each feature, fid.geojson; static files so will render in Github
  • _includes/simples/ contains one GeoJSON LineString geometry for each simplified feature, fid.geojson; static files so will render in Github; used by the overview map
  • _features (the features collection): each feature/mapsection has a file fid.f with no content, which generates a GeoJSON feature accessed with /features/fid.geojson; Jekyll adds the feature data as attributes to the geometry (using _layouts/feature)
  • _routefc (the routes feature collection): each mapped route has a file with no content here, named id.fc, which generates a GeoJSON Feature Collection for all the features in the route (using _layouts/routefc), accessed with /id.geojson. Like the features collection, the feature data is added as attributes by Jekyll.

Other files

  • /simp.geo generates a GeoJSON Feature Collection for all the simplified geometries (using _layouts/fc), accessed with /simp.geojson, and used by the overview map
  • unmapped.geo generates a GeoJSON Feature Collection with 1 feature per unmapped branch (using _layouts/fc, which uses _data/places.yaml to get the appropriate Lon/Lat coordinate for each town); this is accessed with /unmapped.geojson, and is also used by the overview map

Mapping

The map program uses https://github.com/probins/map-make; js/setupMapdef.js converts the URL into map-make parameters.