jsts

What is jsts?

The jsts (JavaScript Topology Suite) npm package is a JavaScript library for performing various geometric operations. It is a port of the well-known JTS Topology Suite, which is widely used in the GIS (Geographic Information Systems) community. The library provides a range of functionalities for creating, manipulating, and analyzing planar geometric objects.

What are jsts's main functionalities?

Geometry Creation

This feature allows you to create geometric objects from Well-Known Text (WKT) representations. In this example, a point geometry is created from a WKT string.

const jsts = require('jsts');
const reader = new jsts.io.WKTReader();
const point = reader.read('POINT (10 20)');
console.log(point);

Geometric Operations

This feature allows you to perform geometric operations such as union, intersection, and difference. In this example, the union operation is performed on two polygon geometries.

const jsts = require('jsts');
const reader = new jsts.io.WKTReader();
const geom1 = reader.read('POLYGON ((30 10, 40 40, 20 40, 10 20, 30 10))');
const geom2 = reader.read('POLYGON ((20 30, 35 35, 30 20, 20 30))');
const union = geom1.union(geom2);
console.log(union);

Spatial Analysis

This feature allows you to perform spatial analysis operations such as calculating distances between geometries. In this example, the distance between two point geometries is calculated.

const jsts = require('jsts');
const reader = new jsts.io.WKTReader();
const geom1 = reader.read('POINT (10 20)');
const geom2 = reader.read('POINT (30 40)');
const distance = geom1.distance(geom2);
console.log(distance);

Other packages similar to jsts

turf

Turf is a JavaScript library for advanced geospatial analysis. It provides a wide range of spatial operations and is highly optimized for performance. Compared to jsts, Turf offers more functionalities for working with GeoJSON data and is often used in web mapping applications.

geolib

Geolib is a lightweight library for geospatial operations in JavaScript. It focuses on basic geospatial calculations such as distance, area, and bounding boxes. While it is not as feature-rich as jsts, it is simpler to use for basic geospatial tasks.

openlayers

OpenLayers is a powerful library for displaying and interacting with maps in web applications. It includes some geospatial analysis functionalities but is primarily focused on map rendering and user interaction. Compared to jsts, OpenLayers is more suitable for building interactive map applications.

README

JSTS

JSTS is an ECMAScript library of spatial predicates and functions for processing geometry conforming to the Simple Features Specification for SQL published by the Open Geospatial Consortium. JSTS is also a port of the well established Java library JTS.

The primary goal of the project is to provide web mapping applications with a complete library for processing and analyzing simple geometries but JSTS can also be used as a free standing geometry library.

JSTS was made using automatic translation of the original JTS Java source via AST to AST transformation preserving the JTS API, except for the I/O related classes which has been selectively and manually ported with support for WKT, GeoJSON and OpenLayers 3+.

A Google group is available for discussions.

A port of JTS Validation Suite provides additional tests.

Basic functionality together with OpenLayers is demonstrated here.

Browser or Node.js use

An ES5 (the most common JavaScript variant) compatible build for browsers is available here.

An ES6+ compatible build for browsers is available here.

Including the above build as a script will import a global object jsts exposing similar public API as org.locationtech.jts in the JTS API.

For Node.js 14+, install using npm install jsts after which you can import individual modules with fx. import GeoJSONReader from 'jsts/org/locationtech/jts/io/GeoJSONReader.js'. Note that since some time JSTS is only delivered as ES modules and you should be aware of https://nodejs.org/api/esm.html and specifically https://nodejs.org/api/esm.html#interoperability-with-commonjs.

I/O related classes in JTS had to be manually ported. From the original formats WKT and GeoJSON are supported. A direct reader/writer for OpenLayers 3+ geometries exist. See the API documentation for these specific classes.

ES6 modules use

As of version 1.4.0 it's possible to depend on the source modules directly using the NPM package. For most environments it will require a bundler like Rollup to work. topolis serves as an example project depending on JSTS in this way. The example page also exists in a version that loads JSTS as modules in supporting browsers .

Caveats

• In a few cases Java overloading cannot be correctly translated to JavaScript. One such case is createMultiPoint in GeometryFactory which only works with Point[] arguments.
• In some cases you might get a TopologyException thrown as an Error. This is expected if a calculation fails due to precision issues. To resolve this issue try reducing precision in the input and at the same time make sure the input is valid as defined by the OGC Simple Features specification. To reduce precision GeometryPrecisionReducer can be used.
• Shortcut methods on Geometry from upstream API are not available (.buffer, .intersects and more) unless using the bundled ES5 version that has these monkey patched in. The shortcut methods have been removed because they cause difficult circular dependencies. You can find the equivalent methods on the appropriate operation class.