CRS and Bounding Boxes

In geojsonio we follow the below guidelines for GeoJSON, and try to preserve CRS information, and bbox information when converting formats.

The following are the guidelines for CRS and bounding boxes for geojson, annotated as needed, get complete guidelines at http://geojson.org/geojson-spec.html.

CRS (Coordinate Reference System Objects)

• If an object has no crs member, then its parent or grandparent object's crs member may be acquired. If no crs member can be so acquired, the default CRS shall apply to the GeoJSON object.
• Default CRS: WGS84 datum, w/ longitude and latitude units of decimal degrees
• The crs member should be on the top-level GeoJSON object in a hierarchy (in feature collection, feature, geometry order) and should not be repeated or overridden on children or grandchildren of the object
• A non-null CRS object has two mandatory members: “type” and “properties”
• The value of the type member must be a string, indicating the type of CRS object
• The value of the properties member must be an object

Linked CRS

A CRS object may indicate a coordinate reference system by name. In this case, the value of its type member must be the string name. The value of its properties member must be an object containing a name member. The value of that name member must be a string identifying a coordinate reference system. OGC CRS URNs such as urn:ogc:def:crs:OGC:1.3:CRS84 shall be preferred over legacy identifiers such as EPSG:4326:

"crs": {
  "type": "name",
  "properties": {
    "name": "urn:ogc:def:crs:OGC:1.3:CRS84"
  }
}

Named CRS

A CRS object may link to CRS parameters on the Web. In this case, the value of its type member must be the string link, and the value of its properties member must be a Link object (see 3.2.1. Link Objects).

Link objects

A link object has one required member: href, and one optional member: type.

The value of the required href member must be a dereferenceable URI.

The value of the optional type member must be a string that hints at the format used to represent CRS parameters at the provided URI. Suggested values are: proj4, ogcwkt, esriwkt, but others can be used:

"crs": {
  "type": "link", 
  "properties": {
    "href": "http://example.com/crs/42",
    "type": "proj4"
  }
}

Relative links may be used to direct processors to CRS parameters in an auxiliary file:

"crs": {
  "type": "link",
  "properties": {
    "href": "data.crs",
    "type": "ogcwkt"
  }
}

Bounding Boxes

To include information on the coordinate range for geometries, features, or feature collections, a GeoJSON object may have a member named bbox. The value of the bbox member must be a 2*n array where n is the number of dimensions represented in the contained geometries, with the lowest values for all axes followed by the highest values. The axes order of a bbox follows the axes order of geometries. In addition, the coordinate reference system for the bbox is assumed to match the coordinate reference system of the GeoJSON object of which it is a member.

Example of a bbox member on a feature:

{ 
  "type": "Feature",
  "bbox": [-180.0, -90.0, 180.0, 90.0],
  "geometry": {
    "type": "Polygon",
    "coordinates": [[
      [-180.0, 10.0], [20.0, 90.0], [180.0, -5.0], [-30.0, -90.0]
    ]]
  }
  ...
}

Example of a bbox member on a feature collection:

{ 
  "type": "FeatureCollection",
  "bbox": [100.0, 0.0, 105.0, 1.0],
  "features": [
    ...
  ] 
}