René's URL Explorer Experiment

{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"Add optional geospatial functionality","articleBody":"The recent PR #69 completed the removal of all geospatial capability (even optional ones) around `SamplingFeatures.FeatureGeometry` that [started with a commit in early June](https://github.com/ODM2/ODM2PythonAPI/commit/f89d58369a7e2cfdc7ac8179af87d1914fbe05df#diff-0ee3d0270e8061c9eb0e712c2e83d27a) that removed the `shape` method on the `models.py` `SamplingFeatures` class and related, geoalchemy-based functionality.\n\nFor convenience for future follow-ups, I'm pasting below [some of my own comments from the discussions on PR #69:](https://github.com/ODM2/ODM2PythonAPI/pull/69#issuecomment-244819377)\n\n\u003e more broadly, I don't agree with the complete removal of all geospatial capability that started in early June commits. I can definitely see the benefit of making that functionality more optional, including moving related import statements into the optional methods that use them (or even into a utilities module) so that packages like `shapely` and `geoalchemy` are not required. But that's different from removing all geospatial capability entirely. FYI, I believe Choonhan was relying on the `shape` function for ODM2RESTAPI, and I personally found it very useful and non-obtrusive, except requiring the installation of those geospatial packages.\n\n**TO-DO for me (Emilio):**\n- Start a new 'geospatial' branch to bring back the deleted functionality, and work towards making it as lightweight/optional as possible so it doesn't impose the burden of installing additional packages for user who would never use it.\n- Develop usage examples for that code.\n- Think about adding functionality to go from `FeatureGeometryWKT` to Python geospatial objects.\n- Look back through old issues to see what relevant, old discussions should be linked up into this issue.\n\ncc'ing @lsetiawan, b/c I plan to start pulling him into `odm2api` development later this month. He's already built some ODM2 geodjango experience, and has a strong Python geospatial experience.\n","author":{"url":"https://github.com/emiliom","@type":"Person","name":"emiliom"},"datePublished":"2016-09-05T23:09:27.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":4},"url":"https://github.com/70/ODM2PythonAPI/issues/70"}