// the find
joewdavies/awesome-frontend-gis
Geospatial resources for web development :earth_africa: 🗺️
A well-organized reference list of JavaScript libraries, data sources, web apps, and learning resources for building map-based web applications. Covers everything from Leaflet and Deck.GL to obscure-but-useful tools like flatbush (spatial indexing) and statsbreaks (classification for choropleth maps). Aimed at frontend developers who need to add geospatial features and don't want to spend a week figuring out what the ecosystem even looks like.
The library section is genuinely useful: it separates mapping renderers from data processing tools, which matters when you're not sure whether you need Turf.js or JSTS. The data sources section is one of the more practical parts — it distinguishes APIs from bulk downloads, saving you from discovering mid-project that the endpoint you planned to use doesn't exist offline. The ObservableHQ notebooks are tiered by difficulty and link to real, runnable code rather than screenshots. The color advice section (CartoColor, ColorBrewer) is a detail most similar lists skip entirely, and it's actually where many GIS visualizations go wrong.
It's a link list, not an opinionated guide — there's no signal about which mapping library to actually pick for a given situation, so a newcomer still has to evaluate Leaflet vs. OpenLayers vs. MapLibre vs. Deck.GL from scratch. Several entries (Plasio, Wrld.js, datamaps) appear to be effectively unmaintained but are listed without any caveat. The web apps section mixes production-quality tools with hobby projects without distinguishing them. No TypeScript-specific tooling, no mention of PMTiles or modern tile delivery patterns, and nothing on server-side rendering considerations — gaps that matter for anyone building a serious product in 2025.