David Puckett ⁽¹⁵⁾

My Road to GIS I am absolutely fascinated by the various paths that lead nerds of all types to GIS. From natural sciences, social sciences, science fiction, art, wanderers of all kinds stumble upon GIS and decide to stay. Me too. Some use it as…

DISCLAIMER (2025): This post describes a small demo I built in 2015 using the USDA Recreation Information Database (RIDB) API and Mapzen services. Both the RIDB API and Mapzen Search have since been discontinued, so the live demo no longer functions. I’m keeping the write-up…

Autocomplete Map Search Autocomplete multi-source search with ArcGIS REST services Search First. Search is expected in modern web applications. And what better use of a map application than to start typing what you want, get a list of relevant suggestions, pick one, and be taken…

Togglability Many of the desktop GIS paradigms have unfortunately made their way to the web. Second only to the “Identify” tool in popularity, the checkbox for toggling layers is still the most common way to turn map layers on and off. While I appreciate the…

Update (2025): This post describes a workflow I built in 2014 for converting GeoJSON ↔ ArcJSON using a custom tool. Some of the external services mentioned below — including the City of Fort Collins ArcGIS REST endpoint used in the example — are no longer…