This directory contains multiple JavaScript files which are all related to providing librarian services for geographic information.

Currently these are interacted with programmically, although command line tools could easily be derived.

CachingGeocoder geo-codes location names: it maps from names to coordinates, returning Promises.

As the name implies it also maintains a cache of said Promises. Further, there is a mechanism for pre-fetching individual mappings, so that the cache can be pre-populated without network traffic, say, during app initiation i.e. the cache can be primed.

Note, using Google's terminology:

• "geocoding" is mapping from names to coordinates
• "reserve geocoding" is mapping location to name

OSM uses the same terminology.

At this time, CachingGeocoder does not do reverse geocoding.

CachingGeocoder is solely an in-memory thing. Issues of where (or even, if) persistence happens is a different issue.

This project does have such a cache persistance concerned thing: CacheAssistent (in CacheAssistent.js). CacheAssistant can initialize a CachingGeocoder with pre-fetched data read from a local file (or other data source) as well as serialize the cache at any moment.

CachingGeocoder is Observable. A CacheAssistant can observe a CachingGeocoder to get notified of when new info is in the cache. Deciding what to do with those notifications it not CachingGeocoders concern. A CacheAssistant might, say, wish to save to storage upon each new entry in a CachingGeocoder.