Browse data by place / time

[mmmenno]

The api has been built to search for names and id's, mainly. However, i imagine lots of people would like to explore the data within a certain area on a map, preferably with a timeslider to select a specific period in which to look.

A prototype on http://islandsofmeaning.nl/projects/bbviewer/ tries to do just that and shows some problems you face with an approach like that:

First of all, a maximum of 100 results still requires a high zoom level before producing meaningful information.

Before or after searches often fail because the info is in different pits - the boundingbox search finds a pit with the geometry, while the validFrom / validUntil info is in another pit within the same concept.

Also, it is difficult to search for concepts that existed in a single year, let's say 1825, because it requires the pit to have a validFrom < =1825 and a validUntil >= 1825. If the pit doesn't have a validUntil, because the building still exists today, it will not be found. It might be a better idea to search for pits that have a validUntil > 1825 or no validUntil at all.

The way the before and after api-parameters now work is not really intuitive (well, not to me). In the prototype, zoom in on Walcheren and search for Places after 1400. This will produce verdwenen dorpen that disappeared after 1400. There is no way to search for verdwenen dorpen that disappeared in the 15th century, because before=1500 only finds pits with a validFrom before 1500. Maybe we should have four time parameters: startafter, startbefore, endafter and endbefore.