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Title
ADDING CUSTOM SEARCH ENGINES TO OPENLAYERS WITH OPENSEARCH 'GEO'
Abstract
We are presenting a tool to easily add custom geographic search engines to web mapping applications. It is an OpenLayers control that implements the OpenSearch ‘geo’ extension, a specification to describe geographic query interfaces in a standard, yet very simple way. As simple as a single text, and, optionally, a geographic extent. Search responses can be read in multiple formats, and dynamically loaded in a standard vector layer.
A collection of OpenSearch-geo wrappers for popular web 2.0 services is also presented, so geographic (or geotagged) content from Geonames, OpenStreetMap, Wikipedia, Flickr and Twitter can be queried using the same protocol, and results shown over a map.
Future version 3 of OGC’s catalog (CS-W) specification will also include the OpenSearch-geo interface. Some catalog servers already implement it, such as GeoNetwork OpenSource. Brokering engines as GI-cat or CatalogConnector also transform queries from OpenSearch to practically any existing catalog profile or implementation. So OpenSearch can be used as a lightweight alternative for most of the existing catalog repositories.
A demo scenario with all the mentioned search engines will be shown, demonstrating its ease of implementation and integration. Code snippets will be pointed out to guide those audience members willing to incorporate search capabilities in their own OpenLayers applications. A brief description of OpenSearch protocol will be outlined as well, for those interested in publishing their custom search engines with a simple standard.
Authors
Oscar Fonts - Universitat Jaume I
