Open Geo Words

Convert coordinates into user-friendly three words

Inspired by what3words. This standalone js library converts coordinates into three words that are easier to read, write, and communicate with. Essentially, each 3m block in the whole world is mapped to a set of words.

Conversion example

var lonlat  = [73.1132, 33.5321];
var result = OpenGeoWords.generateWordsString(lonlat)
///blower.endurance.napier

Reverse convert example

var words = "///blower.endurance.napier"
var result = OpenGeoWords.parseWordsString(lonlat)
// [73.1132, 33.5321]

Explore the examples directory for demos that you can run on your browser.

Install via npm

npm install open-geo-words

And then in your browser code:

import { OpenGeoWords } from "open-geo-words";

Or in your Node.js code:

var { OpenGeoWords } = require("open-geo-words");

Install via <script> tag from CDN

<script src="https://unpkg.com/[email protected]/dist/open-geo-words.js"></script>

And then in your code:

var OpenGeoWords = new window["open-geo-words"].OpenGeoWords;

Purpose

What3words is pretty amazing, but it only works as an online API. In GIS and mapping domain, there is an increasing demand for offline systems so I decided to write this tiny script in a couple of hours to provide an alternative.

Limitations

~~Currently a four words string is generated instead of three. That is because the words list I am using only has about 8000 words. I am looking for a list of about 60k words to properly map the world in three words. The list must only contain most frequent words in simple english, without any profanity and complications. If you find such a list, please let me know.~~

Three words are now supported. The dictionary of about 60k words is built in, and heavily compressed to speed up the page load.

Stay in touch

For latest releases and announcements, check out my site: aliashraf.net

License

This software is released under the MIT License. Please read LICENSE for information on the software availability and distribution.

Copyright (c) 2022 Ali Ashraf