Guru Maps now supports GeoJSON and MapCSS 🚀

One of the most remarkable features added to Guru Maps recently (since v4.5.0) was support for GeoJSON and MapCSS. Now it is very easy to add a layer of your data to the map.

Briefly:

• Several GeoJSON files can be shown on top of the map at the same time;
• You can customize the appearance of GeoJSON files using MapCSS;
• For changing GeoJSON and MapCSS files, you can set up an update by link;
• Overlay layers, GeoJSON and MapCSS support are free for all users.

GeoJSON is a universal format for spatial data exchange. You can have a large spatial database such as OpenStreetMap or any other. From this database, you can export some of the data you are interested in. Mountain trails and their difficulties, or trees with breed and age, or administrative boundaries and their areas, or contour lines. Whatever you want. Thanks to overpass-turbo you can do it without getting up from your sofa. Then add these data to Guru Maps and adjust their appearance to suit your needs.

Each GeoJSON file is added over the map as a separate layer. In the application settings, you can choose which layers to show and which to not. If an external keyboard is connected, you can quickly switch the visibility of the layer using Shift+1 … Shift+9. Bitmap layers such as OpenSeaMap or hill shades from WMFLabs.org can be added along with GeoJSON files.

To see all aspects of GeoJSON data, you can write your own MapCSS style file for them. The simple MapCSS syntax allows you to specify at what scale to show objects, which images to use for points, what color to fill polygons with, and what thickness lines should be, and how to write text. This is the style format used in Guru Maps to display OpenStreetMap vector data.

Examples of how to use GeoJSON and MapCSS can be found in the documentation.