The Osmium Framework

Jochen Topf

Details about the talk:
Osmium is a C++ framework for working with OSM data files. Osmium will parse OSM files (XML or PBF) and call back into handlers for each object (node, way, relation) it encounters along the way. The handlers it calls can then do interesting things with those objects. Osmium comes with some handlers that do statistics, assemble ways from nodes, assemble multipolygons from ways and more. But you can also develop your own handlers.

The most interesting handler is probably the Javascript handler that uses an embedded Javascript engine to allow you to write your own handlers in Javascript instead of C++. Using the Google V8 Javascript engine that compiles Javascript into machine code it gives you a powerful and extremly fast way to work with OSM data. It can, for instance, be used to extract data from OSM and/or convert OSM data into shapefiles.

The talk introduced Osmium and the osmjs tool and shows you how to use it. It also explains what you have to do to implement your own handlers in C++ or Javascript.

Osmium is, of course, Open Source. More information is at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osmium .

Details about the speaker:
Jochen has been an OSM contributor since 2006. He is actively mapping, developing software and building the German OSM community. He is co-author of the most comprehensive book about OpenStreetMap (see www.openstreetmap.info). He has turned his OSM hobby into a business developing software and as consultant on all things OSM and geo.

More about his involvement with OSM can be found at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Joto .

Theme: tech