Reports from the field

In our final example in this chapter, we'll get off of the bus and out into the field. Modern smartphones, tablets, and laptops allow us to update a GIS and view those updates from everywhere. We'll use HTML, GeoJSON, the Leaflet JavaScript library, and a pure-Python library named Folium to create a client-server application that allows us to post geospatial information to a server and then create an interactive web map to view those data updates.

First, we need a web form that shows your current location and updates the server when you submit the form with comments about your location. You can find the form here: http://geospatialpython.github.io/Learn/fieldwork.html.

The following screenshot shows the form:

You can view the source of that form to see how it works. The mapping is done using the Leaflet library and posts GeoJSON to a unique URL...