Location text data conversion

This page shows an example of converting a list of locations and geographic coordinates in text form to JSON form as in intermediate representation for a clustering application.

The cities are located in Pennsylvania.

Source: https://www.mapsofworld.com/usa/states/pennsylvania/lat-long.html (2020-02-05)

In this case, the "used data" is the data is used in some application for analysis and/or decision-making.

Note that as one develops a (data flow) system for processing and analyzing data, one may need to return to part of the data flow to redo or change how that data is processed.

The following program takes the raw text data and converts it to JSON.

Text input file: ./mapdata1.txt
JSON output file: ./mapdata1.json

I have found that even if one only wants a list of data, it is best to always create the JSON as a dictionary and make the data list part of that dictionary.

One almost always finds a later need for additional parts of the data that need added and a dictionary makes it easy to add those other parts. Here is the Python code [#1]

import json
textFs1 = "././mapdata1.txt"
jsonFs2 = "././mapdata1.json"
print("Read: \"{0:s}\"".format(textFs1))
print("")
with open(textFs1,"r") as textF1:
	textList1 = textF1.readlines()
title1 = "PA cities map data"
jsonDict1 = {}
jsonList1 = []
limit1 = 4
for pos1,text1 in enumerate(textList1):
	list1 = text1.split(" ")
	city1 = " ".join(list1[:-2])
	lat1 = float(list1[-2])
	lng1 = float(list1[-1])
	if pos1 < limit1:
		print("\t{0:d}. {1:4.2f} {2:4.2f} {3:s}".format(pos1,lat1,lng1,city1))
	elif pos1 == limit1:
		print("\t...")
	jsonList1.append([lat1,lng1,city1])
jsonDict1["title"] = title1
jsonDict1["data"] = jsonList1
jsonText1 = json.dumps(jsonDict1,indent=1)
print("")
print("Write: \"{0:s}\"".format(jsonFs2))
with open(jsonFs2,"w") as jsonF2:
	jsonF2.write(jsonText1)
print("")
jsonList2 = jsonText1.split("\n")
limit2 = 13
for pos2,text2 in enumerate(jsonList2):
	if pos2 < limit2:
		print("\t{0:s}".format(text2))
	elif pos2 == limit2:
		print("\t...")

The JSON is then saved to a file to be used by other programs.

Here is the output of the Python code.

Read: "././mapdata1.txt"
	0. 40.90 -77.45 Aaronsburg
	1. 40.01 -80.00 Aaronsburg
	2. 39.88 -76.99 Abbottstown borough
	3. 40.84 -75.22 Ackermanville
	...
Write: "././mapdata1.json"
	{
	 "title": "PA cities map data",
	 "data": [
	  [
	   40.9,
	   -77.45,
	   "Aaronsburg"
	  ],
	  [
	   40.01,
	   -80.0,
	   "Aaronsburg"
	  ],
	...

The above is one way to get text data into a desired form.