This project allows a user to load Shapefiles and DBFs into the browser with JavaScript. Outputs as GeoJSON for use with other Mapping APIs such as OpenLayers.

Inspired by the excellent work by Tom Carden (http://github.com/RandomEtc/shapefile-js/).

Overview

I just got this out there so nothing is minified. See index.html for an example of order. All files need to be in the same directory. This will use Web Workers if the browser support exists. Not recommended for large files, more of an experiment than anything.

Running the Example

Host the files (example won't run off disk, needs to be ran on a web server), a simple way to do this is run the following command in the project root:

python -m SimpleHTTPServer

And visit http://localhost:8000 in your favorite browser.

Usage

You can use it to parse shapefiles (.shp) or dBase files (.dbf) or both. Here are some examples.

Load Shapefile Only

new Shapefile("myshapefile.shp", function (data) {
    // data returned
});

Load DBF Only

new DBF("mydbf.dbf", function (data) {
    // data returned
});

Load Shapefile w/ DBF Attributes

new Shapefile({
    shp: "myshape.shp",
    dbf: "myshape.dbf"
}, function (data) {
    // data returned
});

Use with OpenLayers

var parser = new OpenLayer.Format.GeoJSON(),
    features;

new Shapefile({
    shp: "myshape.shp",
    dbf: "myshape.dbf"
}, function (data) {
    features = parser.read(data.geojson);
});

Resources

I used the technical descriptions found here to parse the binary:

ESRI Shapefile Technical Description - PDF

dBase (Xbase) File Format Description

Future

I plan to implement (time permitting) some custom renderers like SVG or Canvas (besides using OpenLayers) to improve the speed.

Feel free to hack at this, submit bugs, pull requests, and make it better. If you write a renderer, please push it back and I'll add it to the project.

License

(The MIT License)

Copyright (c) 2010 Marc Harter <wavded@gmail.com>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.