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OpenLayers in ZK

asked 2010-12-20 23:52:02 +0800

luket gravatar image luket
12 1

updated 2010-12-20 23:53:24 +0800

Hi,

Background:
I'm doing some evaluation of the ZK framework to see if it's suitable for some of the web apps we build. Most of our web apps have a mapping component. Idealy we'd like to use some google maps layers and some of our own (provided by OGC services and GeoRSS). ZK looks like a promising framework, however I've not found a workable openlayers component and gmaps does not seem flexible enough with regard to adding our own layers and drawing geometries on the maps and sending them back to the server.

Question:
1) Is there an OpenLayers component floating around? I've tried OLmaps, which looked promising, however, it has the apperance of a dead project. Broken demos and links on the site, no changes in the last 8 months and all forum mentions are 2007 or 2008. I've not been able to get it functional. The download on the site doesn't work, but the SVN repository does. I grabbed the olmaps jar from the dist in SVN, but was getting no class def found errors. I then checked out the project and compiled it myself. It now loads openlayers, but has other errors ("failed to invoke zkOLmaps.init").
2) Does anyone know if OLmaps is still alive (even better, have you got it working?)
3) Is it possible to do what I mentioned earlier with gmaps? ie. add my own layers from WMS, users draw geoms and send them back to the server.

Any advice or insight would be much appreciated.
Luke

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answered 2011-01-06 18:46:35 +0800

luket gravatar image luket
12 1

:bump:
Does anyone do maps with ZK beyond just displaying an out of the box google maps? eg. custom layers or drawing on the map

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answered 2011-01-07 11:08:28 +0800

windeyu gravatar image windeyu flag of United States
288 3

updated 2011-01-07 11:11:54 +0800

We developed our own custom ZK client-side widget integrating with openlayers, and its server-side counter-part component to parameterize the openlayers map, get openlayers' events to the server, and push data from the server to the client-side map. However, it took us some learning curve to know
1) How to develop custom ZK widget/component (We took a remote training course with a ZK engineer)
2) How to use openlayers library in depth
3) Advanced javacript programming, particularly avoid memory leak when cleaning up openlayers objects.

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answered 2011-01-09 17:47:54 +0800

luket gravatar image luket
12 1

Thanks for the info windeyu. It's helpful to know where others are at. I suspect olmaps was also developed for a specific project and has now been left behind. Have you considered submitting your openlayers component back to the opensource community?

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answered 2011-01-10 11:30:43 +0800

windeyu gravatar image windeyu flag of United States
288 3

Hi luket, the chances are small because our company is not in the open-source business, but I can tell you it's very rewarding to try developing a custom ZK component integrating with a third-party javascript library. After we've done with openlayers, we feel that we can do it again with any other javascript library, and all client-side technologies are back to our finger tips!

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answered 2011-04-05 03:20:58 +0800

fvilla gravatar image fvilla
3

Hi all - I am the principal investigator of the project that developed OLMaps. We're still using it quite a bit (it works fine for our needs) but it's still an incomplete ZK 3.x project. As noted, the site is in bad shape and the sourceforge project only gets the little fixes we need for our purposes. Yet, I don't think there's another similar effort available, and I'd be happy to give sourceforge commit access to anyone willing to contribute or take over its development. Let me know - [email protected].

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answered 2011-07-23 16:18:44 +0800

fmelossi gravatar image fmelossi
93

Hello is a shame not to continue the project, it is important GIS technology and all customers are increasingly demanding application with GIS functionality. Zk has thought about the future a GIS component that works with OpenLayers?

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answered 2011-08-31 10:59:58 +0800

DrFrank gravatar image DrFrank
39 1

At moment only GWT has a component able to interact with Openlayers. I am interested too in a ZK component for Openlayers: I prefer the ZK approach in order to develop Web Application, but the GWT component for Openlayer is very attractive. To develop a ZK compoennt is not so easy..... it need some effort that many little companies (and research institute) cannot perform, and a ZK component for Openlayer is not so banal.

I hope that ZK will provide a new OL component in next years...

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answered 2011-09-02 05:51:18 +0800

henrichen gravatar image henrichen
3869 2
ZK Team

Would you mind post this to ZK Feature? Now there is a "voting" mechanism :)

http://tracker.zkoss.org/secure/Dashboard.jspa

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answered 2012-01-31 13:23:35 +0800

ericksperandio gravatar image ericksperandio
55 5

Is there any planning for ZK to have this feature in the next weeks? ZK is really missing a good GIS solution.

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answered 2012-04-11 17:32:02 +0800

mhj gravatar image mhj flag of Brazil
806 1 7

on 04/Jan/12 5:00 PM i posted a feature for this, now you have to vote for the zk team fix this issue.
http://tracker.zkoss.org/browse/ZK-749

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Asked: 2010-12-20 23:52:02 +0800

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Last updated: Jul 31 '12

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