Spatial data in Solid Pods

Hello everyone!

I am working on a research project for university to assess the feasibility of Solid for use with the geo/spatial data context. To play around with the Pods a bit, we developed a methodology to explore how various spatial data standards and formats can be used within the Solid ecosystem. I have very limited web dev background and so the point is to try out some simple things.

I have followed this tutorial to create the getting started app: Getting Started — Inrupt JavaScript Client Libraries

I have modified it a bit to upload files instead of writing text data. Now, as I understand it a Pod is just a good old filesystem which can be used to store all kinds of files with Linked Data being a benefit which is not necessarily a requirement. My data consists of 5 sample location points formatted in several spatial data formats (GPX, GML, GeoJSON, KML, XML). However, I have only been able to upload the location points only in GeoJSON and XML formats.

I assume that all of these formats could easily be uploaded as Linked data but I am not sure I have the technical ability to do that so I wanted to try files first. How is it possible that some files can be uploaded to a pod and some not? Is that a limitation of Solid, Solid Community Pod, or is it something else? Are there some resources available which deal with or discuss the use of spatial data in a Pod?

Thank you very much! Have a nice day!

If it helps, the sample data and code can be found here:

Which server is the data being stored on - CSS, ESS, NSS? What content-types are giving you problems and how do you specify them when writing? What error messages do you get when the write fails?

4 Likes

Hi Jeff,

Thank you for getting back to me. The Pod is on Solid Community which runs on NSS. Your question about content-types gave me an idea which I quickly tested and it appears to working now for files which did not before. The issue was that I was not specifying the content-types properly and received bad request errors.

Thank you for your help!

3 Likes