Location XML Files

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7.5.1 Location XML Files

The IDV supports a variety of location text file formats. All of these formats can be loaded through the File Chooser. Select the "Location" data type.

7.5.1.0	Locations XML
7.5.1.1	CSV Format
7.5.1.2	GeoRSS Format

7.5.1.0 Locations XML

The main one format the IDV uses is a custom locations xml format. This format still has some nomenclature from when it was atmospheric science related (e.g. "stations"). A simple example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<stationtable name="Example">
    <station name="station 1"  lat="65:02:06" lon="-147:30:06" elev="790"/>
    <station name="station 2"  lat="40.3" lon="-107.5" elev="10"/>
    ...
</stationtable>

The lat and lon attributes can be of the form:

    +/-  ddd:mm, ddd:mm:, ddd:mm:ss, ddd::ss, ddd.fffff ===>   [+/-] ddd.fffff
    +/-  ddd, ddd:, ddd::                               ===>   [+/-] ddd
    +/-  :mm, :mm:, :mm:ss, ::ss, .fffff                ===>   [+/-] .fffff
    +/-  :, ::                                          ===>       0.0
    Any of the above with N,S,E,W appended

The elev attribute is optional. By default it is in meters. You can override this default with an elevunit in the stationtable tag. e.g.:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<stationtable name="Example" elevunit="feet">
  <station name="station 1"  lat="65:02:06" lon="-147:30:06" elev="5340"/>
...

The station tags can have an id attribute as well:

<station  id="APD" name="Fairbanks/Pedro Dome"  
          lat="65:02:06" lon="-147:30:06" elev="790"/>

The station tags can also have any other attributes:

<station  id="APD" name="Fairbanks/Pedro Dome" 
          st="AK" co="US" 
          lat="65:02:06" lon="-147:30:06" elev="790"/>
<station id="FTG" name="Denver/Boulder" 
         st="CO" co="US" 
         lat="39:47:12" lon="-104:32:45" elev="1675"/>

These can be displayed by the station model used in the Location Display Control.

If you want to create a permenant list of stations that shows up the the Display→Locations menu, you can create a file called userstations.xml in the .unidata/idv/DefaultIdv directory under your user's home directory. The format would look like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<stationtables>

<stationtable name="SubsetA" category="My Custom Stations">
(list of stations for subset A)
</stationable>

<stationtable name="SubsetB" category="My Custom Stations">
(list of stations for subset B)
</stationtable>
</stationtables>

This will show up in the menu as a top menu called and sub menus and .

7.5.1.1 CSV Format

Location data can be defined in a CSV (Comma Separated Value) format. The first line is a comma separated list of column names. There must be columns that are latitude and longitude. These are denoted with (case insensitive):

latitude
lat
longitude
lon
long

Altitude is given by the column names:

alt 
altitude

The altitude value, if defined, is by default in meters. You can optionally specify a unit with the suffix: "[unit name]" (see example).

The first column that is found that is not one of the location columns is taken to be the name of the location.

Example:

Name,Latitude,Longitude,Altitude,State
Boulder,40,-107,5430[feet],CO
Miami,30,-95,0[feet],FL
...

7.5.1.2 GeoRSS Format

The IDV can also read GeoRSS formats. This is a geocoded RSS feed. An example is the USGS earthquake feed:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/catalogs/eqs7day-M2.5.xml

Unidata's Integrated Data Viewer > Miscellaneous > IDV Special Data Formats