Add TimestampedGeoJson to FeatureGroup

[dbpodrasky]

Feature request to enable adding a TimestampedGeoJson object to a folium FeatureGroup. This would allow different feature collections to be plotted, selected, deselected on the same map canvas. Works great for GeoJson, TimestampedGeoJson would be much improved if this was added.

[hansthen]

@dbpodrasky Doesn't this "just work" out of the box? What happens if you try this?

[dbpodrasky]

Does folium.plugins.TimestampedGeoJson() have a feature_group optional argument? When using GeoJson objects I can add them to an existing FeatureGroup, but this doesn't work with TimestampedGeoJson as these can only be added to a map instance.

[dbpodrasky]

TypeError: TimestampedGeoJson.__init__() got an unexpected keyword argument 'feature_group'

[hansthen]

I think I see the issue. Thanks for clarifying.

[dbpodrasky]

Yes, of course. Let me know if I can provide anything else to assist like sample code, build nums, etc.? TimestampedGeoJson is a really nice tool and I'm able to visualize coordinate-mapped dataset really well with it. But, the FeatureGroup selection tool that works with GeoJson is very useful indeed. As a workaround I just make separate maps/HTMLs for each of the collections I would aspire to add to a FeatureGroup.

[hansthen]

I checked the code, but I do not see an easy way to fix this in the current implementation of TimestampedGeoJson. FeatureGroup objects require Layer objects on the map. However, TimestampedGeoJson combines a Leaflet Control and a Leaflet Layer object, but really is neither. I'd need to do a major refactor of the plugin to fix this.

As a workaround you could have a look at the timeline plugin. This provides the Timeline class which is a GeoJson with timestamps. It has a separate TimelineControl class. I did not test this myself yet, but it should just work out of the box. (And if it does not it may be simpler to fix.) The specifics on how times are added to the GeoJson are very different, so it may not suit your use case.

Let me know if timeline works for you.

[dbpodrasky]

I will look into whether Timeline would be workable for my project. Thanks for the advice!

[dbpodrasky]

Sorry, Hans. I can't make any sense of Timeline from the available docs. I give up on layer control for timed geodata.

[hansthen]

@dbpodrasky It feels to early to give up! Are there specific areas where we can improve the documentation? If you send me your geojson, perhaps I can help you re-implement the required functionality using the Timeline class.

[dbpodrasky]

Okay, let's give it a try. Give me a few days to anonymize an input dataset? Then I can send as a GeoJson.

[hansthen]

Looking forward to it.

[dbpodrasky]

Hans, please see the git repo containing some input data in a CSV with two scripts: one plots the data using GeoJson and includes the desired things like layer control, etc. the other uses TimestampedGeoJson to plot the same data animated by timestamps. Hoping to use these two to create a script that will plot time-aware data and also facilitate layer control using FeatureGroups.

https://github.com/dbpodrasky/FoliumTimestampToTimeline/