Crowdmap: Basic

This is an attempt to create the most basic example of a web map for crowdsourcing... anything that users can draw on a map (points, squares, circles, lines, polygons...). It uses Leaflet.draw (demo) to crowdsource user-generated shapes on a map and then inserts them in a CartoDB table.

Try it here

All You Need to Do After Forking this Repository

1. Perform all the steps under the CartoDB heading
2. Modify the following variables in index.html (search for "TODO") cartoDBusername to your cartodb username cartoDBinsertfunction to the name of your insert function cartoDBtablename to the name of your table in CartoDB
3. Go to http://YOURGITHUBUSERNAME.github.io/crowdmap-basic to play.
4. Modify the code to your whims.

CartoDB

1. Get a free CartoDB account
2. Create a new CartoDB dataset. The default dataset comes with the following fields: {cartodb_id, the_geom, description, name} Each row represents one submission from the map with the first field a unique id assigned by CartoDB to each geometry. the_geom is the geographic object. description is the user input description of the shape, and name is the user's name.
3. In the view for the table, click on the "SQL" tab on the write to execute arbitrary SQL.
   
4. Copy and paste the contents of insert_function.sql (here) This allows you to send data from the map to the CartoDB using a publicly accessible URL while limiting what functions the public can perform on the data (for example, modifying or deleting existing data). This function takes the drawn shape as a GeoJSON, the description, and the username. It converts the GeoJSON to a PostGIS geometry object and then inserts a new row in the table with the geometry, and the other two user-input values. If you have different tables you need to create a unique function for each, it's probably a good idea to save each function as a separate file so you can recall what is on your CartoDB account.
5. Your CartoDB API endpoint is http://YOURUSERNAME.cartodb.com/api/v2/sql

Leaflet

1. Inspiring myself from the excellent tutorial by Mike Foster (@mjfoster83). If this is your first introduction to leaflet, you should probably go through the entire webmapping workshop
2. Modify the setData() function to construct the SQL query which calls the function to insert the data to CartoDB.

    //Convert the drawing to a GeoJSON to pass to the CartoDB sql database
    var drawing = "'"+JSON.stringify(layer.toGeoJSON().geometry)+"'";
   
    //Construct the SQL query to insert data from the three parameters: the drawing, 
    //the input username, and the input description of the drawn shape
      var sql = "SELECT insert_crowd_mapping_data(";
    sql += drawing;
      sql += ","+enteredDescription;
      sql += ","+enteredUsername;
      sql += ");";

3. And then add the sql query to an AJAX call in order to pass the data to your CartoDB table

   //TODO: Change to your username
   var cartoDBusername = "raphaeld"  
   //Sending the data
     $.ajax({
       type: 'POST',
       url: 'https://'+cartoDBusername+'.cartodb.com/api/v2/sql',
       crossDomain: true,
       data: {"q":sql},
       dataType: 'json',
       success: function(responseData, textStatus, jqXHR) {
         console.log("Data saved");
   
       },
       error: function (responseData, textStatus, errorThrown) {
   
           console.log("Problem saving the data");
       }
     });

4. After each new drawing is inserted, the data from the drawnItems layer is passed to the CartoDBData layer without re-querying the database. This does mean that a user won't see others' edits to the map after load. See Mike Foster's tutorial for the easy fix to reload the data from CartoDB after every draw.

   // Transfer drawing to the CartoDB layer
   var newData = layer.toGeoJSON();
     newData.properties.description = description.value;
     newData.properties.name = username.value;
   
   cartoDBData.addData(newData);