Geospatial search/filter

[jmwohl]

I'd like to suggest the addition of a couple common geospatial filtering options.

1. Get all facilities within a radius from a center point.
2. Get all facilities within a bounding box region.

These are both implemented in the Resource Map application's native API, but don't seem to be present in the FRED API. I feel like they would be useful in many applications, since a Facility Registry is geospatial in nature.

[litlfred]

For the search parameters, it may be worthwhile to look at the Geo extension to OpenSearch:
http://www.opensearch.org/Specifications/OpenSearch/Extensions/Geo/1.0/Draft_1

Cheers,
-carl

[steesdale]

Hi Jon, thanks for the addition here. Yes lets consider this in our next round on the FRED API. We have some dedicated time planned in our Road map for starting to kick off the re-start FRED process. We will want to take a look at this for sure. It has specific application for one of your projects, correct? It could be helpful for us to know how you will use it, to inform some of our other documentation on requirements if you don't mind sharing.

[jmwohl]

Hi Scott —

Yes, we do have at least one specific use case for the bounding box option — very simply, given a typical map UI interface, we'd like to fetch only those facilities within the bounds of the map. The idea will be that a user can select a region via the map UI for which all facility info and map tiles will be downloaded for offline use later on.

No specific use case for the radius option at the moment, but I can imagine scenarios where it could be useful.