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Thoughts about a form generation service, <span class="caps">GIS</span> enabled - Alexis Métaireau </title>
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<h1 class="post-title">Thoughts about a form generation service, <span class="caps">GIS</span> enabled</h1>
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<time datetime="2012-04-02T00:00:00+02:00">02 avril 2012</time>
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<p><em>Written by Alexis Métaireau <span class="amp">&</span> Mathieu Leplatre</em></p>
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<p>We have a plan. A “fucking good” one.</p>
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<p>A bunch of friends asked me twice for quite the same thing: a webpage
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with a form, tied to a map generation with some information filtering.
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They didn’t explicitly ask that but that’s the gist of it.</p>
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<p>This idea has been stuck in my head since then and I even think that we
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can come out with something a little bit more flexible and useful. I’ve
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named it <em>carto-forms</em> for now, but that’s only the “codename”.</p>
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<p>To put it shortly: what if we had a way to build forms, ala Google
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forms, but with geographic information in them?</p>
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<p>If you don’t know Google forms, it means having an user-friendly way to
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build forms and to use them to gather information from different users.</p>
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<p>In my opinion, Google forms is missing two important things: first, it’s
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not open-source, so it’s not possible to hack it or even to run it on
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your own server. Second, it doesn’t really know how to deal with
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geographic data, and there is no way to filter the information more than
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in a spreadsheet.</p>
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<p>I knew that <a href="http://blog.mathieu-leplatre.info/">Mathieu</a> and some folks
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at <a href="http://makina-corpus.com">Makina Corpus</a> would be interested in
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this, so I started a discussion with him on <span class="caps">IRC</span> and we refined the
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details of the project and its objectives.</p>
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<p>Imagine the following:</p>
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<ol>
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<li>For a mapping party, we choose a specific topic to map and design
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the form (list of fields (i.e. tags) to be filled + description +
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type of the information) ;</li>
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<li>In situ, users fill the form fields with what they see. Geo fields
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can be pre-populated using device geolocation ;</li>
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<li>At the end of the day, we can see a map with all user contributions
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seized through this particular form ;</li>
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<li>If relevant, a script could eventually import the resulting dataset
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and publish/merge with OpenStreetMap.</li>
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</ol>
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<h2 id="some-use-cases">Some use cases</h2>
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<p>I can see some use cases for this. The first one is a collaborative map,
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with facet filtering. Let’s draw a potential user flow:</p>
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<ul>
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<li>
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<p>An “administrator” goes to the website and creates a form to list
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all the alternative-related events. He creates the following fields:</p>
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<ul>
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<li>Name: a plain text field containing the name of the event.</li>
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<li>Category: the category of the event. Can be a finite list.</li>
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<li>Location: The location of the event. It could be provided by
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selecting a point on a map or by typing an address.</li>
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<li>Date: the date of the event (a datepicker could do the trick)</li>
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</ul>
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<p>Each field in the form has semantic information associated with it
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(yes/no, multiple selection, date-time, geocoding carto, carto
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selection etc)</p>
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</li>
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<li>
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<p>Once finished, the form is generated and the user gets an url (say
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<a href="http://forms.notmyidea.org/alternatives">http://forms.notmyidea.org/alternatives</a>) for it.</p>
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</li>
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<li>
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<p><span class="caps">REST</span> APIs allow third parties to get the form description and to
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push/edit/get information from there.</p>
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</li>
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<li>
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<p>He can communicate the address in any way he wants to his community
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so they can go to the page and add information to it.</p>
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</li>
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<li>
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<p>Then, it is possible to filter the results per location / date or
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category. This can be done via <span class="caps">API</span> calls (useful for third parties)
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or via a nice interface in the browser.</p>
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</li>
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</ul>
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<p>So, as you may have noticed, this would allow us to create interactive
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maps really easily. It’s almost just a matter of some clicks to the
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users. If we also come up with a nice Web <span class="caps">API</span> for this, we could do
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server-side validation and build even phone applications easily.</p>
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<p>To push the cursor a bit further, if we can come with a cool description
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format for the forms, we could even build the forms dynamically on
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different platforms, with generic clients.</p>
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<p>As mentioned before, the idea of a simple tool to support collaborative
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mapping fullfils a recurring necessity !</p>
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<p>We envision a lot of example uses for this : recycling spots, accessible
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spots (wheelchairs, etc.), trees identification, mushrooms picking
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areas, tracking of endangered species (e.g. Bonelli’s Eagle is currently
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tracked by sharing a spreadsheet), spotting of dangerous species (e.g.
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asian predatory wasps), map advertisement boards (most cities do not
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track them!), citizen reporting (e.g. graffiti, potholes, garbage,
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lightning like <a href="http://fixmystreet.ca">http://fixmystreet.ca</a>), geocaching, trajectories (e.g
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hiking, runners, cyclists)…</p>
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<p>Here are some other examples of where <em>carto-forms</em> could be useful:</p>
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<h3 id="simple-gis-storage-backend">Simple <span class="caps">GIS</span> storage backend</h3>
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<p>Let’s say you are a mobile developer, you don’t want to bother with
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PostGIS nor write a custom and insecure code to insert and retrieve your
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<span class="caps">GIS</span> data! You need carto-forms! A simple <span class="caps">API</span> helps you design your
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models/forms and the same <span class="caps">API</span> allows you to <span class="caps">CRUD</span> and query your data.
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Thus, you only need to focus on your application, not on how <span class="caps">GIS</span> data
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will be handled.</p>
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<p>We make a distinction between storage and widgets.</p>
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<p>Besides, if you are a django / drupal / plomino… maintainer : you can
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develop a module to “plug” your models (content types) and <span class="caps">UI</span> to
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carto-forms! Carto forms are then exposed to your backoffice users (ex:
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drupal admin <span class="caps">UI</span>, django adminsite), and likewise you can write your own
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<span class="caps">HTML</span> widgets that consume datasets in frontend views (facets in
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<span class="caps">JSON</span>/<span class="caps">XML</span>, and map data in GeoJSON).</p>
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<h3 id="visualization-tool">Visualization tool</h3>
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<p>Since data submission can be done programmatically using the <span class="caps">API</span>, you
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could use Carto-forms results page as a visualization tool.</p>
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<p>You can explore your dataset content using filters related to each form
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field. Facets filtering is a great advantage, and a map shows the
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resulting features set. You feel like you’re in front of a decision
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support system!</p>
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<p>Of course, filtered raw data can be downloaded (GeoJSON, <span class="caps">XML</span>) and a
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permalink allows to share the page with the state of the filters and the
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zoom/location of the map.</p>
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<h3 id="generic-forms-service">Generic forms service</h3>
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<p>If you want to generate a configuration file (or whatever, email
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messages, …), you will need a form and a template to inlay user
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submitted values and get the result.</p>
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<p>A form service would be really useful to create forms programmatically
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and retrieve cleaned and validated input values.</p>
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<p>You could run a dedicated template service based on <em>carto-forms</em>!
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Parsing a template content, this external service could create a form
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dynamically and bind them together. The output of the form service
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(fields => values) would be bound to the input of a template engine
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(variables => final result).</p>
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<p>Note that for this use-case, there is no specific need of <span class="caps">GIS</span> data nor
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storage of records for further retrieval.</p>
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<h2 id="whats-out-in-the-wild-already">What’s out in the wild already?</h2>
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<p>Of course, there is Google forms, which allows you to do these kind of
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things, but it’s closed and not exactly what we are describing here.</p>
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<p>We’ve discovered the interesting <a href="https://webform.com/">https://webform.com/</a> which allows one
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to create forms with a nice drag-n-drop flow. I would love to reproduce
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something similar for the user experience. However, the project doesn’t
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handle APIs and geolocation information.</p>
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<p>The idea of <a href="http://thoth.io">http://thoth.io</a> is very attractive : an extremely simple
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web <span class="caps">API</span> to store and retrieve data. In addition, <em>carto-forms</em> would do
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datatype validation and have basic <span class="caps">GIS</span> fields (point, line, polygon).</p>
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<p><a href="http://mapbox.com">http://mapbox.com</a> also did an awesome work on cartography, but didn’t
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take into account the form aspect we’re leveraging here.</p>
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<h2 id="so-lets-get-it-real">So… Let’s get it real!</h2>
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<p>As you may have understood, this isn’t a really complicated problem. We
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have been sometimes chatting about that with Mathieu about what we would
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need and how we could achieve this.</p>
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<p>We can probably come with an elegant solution without too much pain.
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Mathieu is used to work with <span class="caps">GIS</span> systems (which is really cool because
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I’m not at all) and knows his subject, so that’s an opportunity to learn ;-)</p>
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<p>We will be at <a href="http://rencontres.django-fr.org">Djangocong</a> on April 14
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and 15 and will probably have a brainstorming session and a sprint on
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this, so if you are around and want to help us, or just to discuss, feel
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free to join!</p>
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<p>We don’t know yet if we will be using django for this or something else.
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We have been thinking about couchdb, couchapps and geocouch but nothing
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is written in stone yet. Comments and proposals are welcome!</p>
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<p>Here is the etherpad document we worked on so far:
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<a href="http://framapad.org/carto-forms">http://framapad.org/carto-forms</a>. Don’t hesitate to add your thoughts
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and edit it, that’s what it’s made for!</p>
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<p>Thanks to <a href="http://sneakernet.fr/">Arnaud</a> and
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<a href="http://qwerty.fuzz.me.uk/">Fuzzmz</a> for proof-reading and typo fixing.</p>
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