[Note: This is straight from the wiki page. It is likely that this will need to be broken up into single page chunks to accommodate further documentation or moved to other books/book-sub-pages as documentation is specifically categorized.]
* Importing Shapefiles
* Geospatial shapefiles can be imported into Drupal's database via the Geo Data module (included with the main Geo module). The required shapefile must be a .zip file that includes, at a minimum, a .shp, .dbf and .shx file. (what about .prj files as an alternative to SRID?) Once imported, the data can be integrated with the site through CCK and/or Views.
* Shapefiles are imported via the "Site building|Geospatial data" menu item. As of March, 2009, the user interface is still under development, things are a bit wonky on the input page, but the basic functionality works. The input fields are described as follows:
* Table label - this field only shows up once a shapefile has been imported. As of March, 2009, it doesn't really do anything.
* Shapefile - a file input field used to select the shapefile for import. The shapefile must be a .zip file. This field is required.
* Table name - The name of the table you'd like the import date into. If the table already exists, the imported data will be appeneded. This name must contain only lowercase letters, numbers, and underscores. The table name entered will be prepended with "geo_data_". This field is required.
* SRID - the Spatial Reference IDentifierindicates the projection system of the imported shapefile. Knowing shapefile's reference system is imperative in knowing exactly how the data is plotted on the surface of the earth. Various spatial vendors use different reference systems, so the SRID provides a way to translate data between different reference systems. In PostgreSQL, or in any other "real" GIS system, it's necessary to store the SRID of each entity, so that when you do comparisons between objects, it knows whether those two objects are speaking the same language. If one side of the equation is using a different SRID than the other side, you must do an on-the-fly transformation to synch them up (example). When using PostgreSQL as the backend database, the value is required, while MySQL will just store it in case you want to do something responsible with it later. The most common projection, the lat/lon system you've encountered on Google Maps and elsewhere, is WGS 84, or 4326 (the default value for this field).
* Create a new table - should be self-explanatory, if this box isn't checked, the imported data will go into an existing "geo_data_" table, potentially overwriting previous data. Need better documentation here.
* geospatial CCK fields
* data
* input
* direct text entry (WKT)
* lat/long
* gmap picker (via gmap_geo module - http://drupal.org/project/gmap_geo)
* See the Geo GUI module (http://drupal.org/project/geo_gui) for inputting using a interactive map for WKT
* display
* WKT
* latitude - working?
* longitude - working?
* GeoRSS - working?
* GMap (via gmap_geo module - http://drupal.org/project/gmap_geo)
* works for points entered via gmap picker
* works for other user-entered points/lines/polygons, as well as geodata imported from shapefiles
* Linestrings and polygons are gently simplified and displayed using the Google Maps API's "encoded polylines", allowing more detail to be shown as you zoom in
* data reference
* geospatial views output
* GeoXML display
* KML - working? I exported a polygon and it ended up in Antarctica
* SVG - bounding box issues?
* Simple XML - buggy?
