= Blueprint for GIS Import/Export =
=== XML ===
We need to be able to Import & Export these XML formats to/from the Database:
 * GeoRSS (URL fetch/publish)
 * GPX (File upload/download)
 * KML (File upload/download & URL fetch/publish)
 * OSM (File upload/download)
 * GML (? Low priority, not used much in real world)

Other formats which may be useful are Shapefiles, PostGIS & JSON.

These should be representations added to the [wiki:BluePrintREST RESTlike controller].

Rather than reinventing the wheel, we could consider wrapping [http://featureserver.org FeatureServer] to do a lot of this work for us (like Web2Py uses !CherryPy) since it is WSGI-based.[[BR]] 
Alternatively we could look to borrow code from it.

The XML conversion is probably best-done using XSL stylesheets:
 * http://sourceforge.net/projects/geofunctions/

Relevant XSDs:
 * [http://georss.org GeoRSS]
  * http://georss.org/xml/1.1/georss.xsd
  * http://georss.org/xml/1.1/gmlgeorss.xsd
 * GPX
  * http://www.topografix.com/gpx/1/1/gpx.xsd
 * GML
  * http://schemas.opengis.net/gml/3.2.1/
 * KML
  * http://schemas.opengis.net/kml/2.2.0/ogckml22.xsd
 * OSM
  * http://dev.openstreetmap.org/~kleptog/osm-0.5.dtd

Sahan Eden uses [wiki:S3XRC S3XRC] for our XML Import/Export which uses lxml:
 * lxml: http://codespeak.net/lxml/index.html#introduction
  * Fast Parser: http://blog.ianbicking.org/2008/03/30/python-html-parser-performance/

Other options are available:
 * XML export from Web2Py: http://michaelangela.wordpress.com/2008/03/29/exporting-a-web2py-table-in-xml/
  * KML export from Web2Py: http://groups.google.com/group/web2py/browse_thread/thread/b59bd3a9c40086f0
 * PyRXP: http://www.reportlab.org/pyrxp.html
  * Faster & optionally validating (DTD, XSD?), but requires compiling into Python so less portable (unless using pyexpat wrapper)
  * PyRXP_Documentation.pdf
  * XSD->DTD conversion (our schema are in XSD format)
   * http://crism.maden.org/consulting/pub/xsl/xsd2dtd.xsl
   * http://weblogs.asp.net/rchartier/archive/2006/03/21/440782.aspx
   * http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/200504/msg00757.html
   * http://bytes.com/groups/xml/85935-converting-xsd-into-dtd
 * cElementTree - included in Python 2.5, strict & fast: http://effbot.org/zone/celementtree.htm
  * {{{mytree=xml.etree.ElementTree.XML(request.body.read())}}}
 * sgmlop (supported by xmlrpclib): http://effbot.org/zone/sgmlop-index.htm
 * pyexpat (non-validating & slower, but built-in to Python 2)
  * http://docs.python.org/library/pyexpat.html
 * Pyfo (example with Web2Py): http://michaelangela.wordpress.com/2008/04/10/simple-xml-creation-with-python/
 * SAX: http://www.devshed.com/c/a/Python/Parsing-XML-with-SAX-and-Python/

CSV to KML Converter:
 * http://code.google.com/apis/kml/articles/csvtokml.html
 * Useful to extend to handle images (multiple images => Tabs)

This is another option for Import (via Python structures):
 * http://www.rexx.com/~dkuhlman/generateDS.html

XML links:
 * http://www.w3schools.com/Schema/schema_intro.asp
 * http://diveintopython.org/xml_processing/index.html
 * http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/09/18/py.html
 * http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/09/10/py.html
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=== Geotagged Photos ===
We should also be able to import Geotagged Photos & have these display on the Map.

Feature Metadata already includes an Image - so the work needed is just in terms of reading the Lat/Lon from the Tag & providing a UI:
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geotag#JPEG_photos

Most developed OSS tools are:
 * [http://www.exiv2.org Exiv2] - C++ with [http://tilloy.net/dev/pyexiv2/ pyexiv2] binding (still experimental) 
 * [http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool ExifTool] - Perl (extra dependencies & needs to be run as system call)
 * Comparison: http://www.picurl.org/development/wiki/Exiv2vsExifTool
Python works-in-progress here:
 * http://sourceforge.net/projects/exif-py/?abmode=1
 * http://www.ivan-herman.net/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi/WorkRelated/SemanticWeb/xmpextract.html XMP-only
 * http://code.google.com/p/python-xmp-toolkit/ XMP-only

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[wiki:BluePrintGeographicInformationSystems GIS BluePrints]