SJ-2015/geoquakes

GeoQuakes

In this lab we will be using live data from the USGS (United States Geological Survey), specifically a data set showing significant earthquakes (M4.0 or greater) from the past week.

Our goal is to:

List information about each quake.
Display a Google Map with a pin at the epicenter of each quake.

Part 1. Rendering Data

Take a moment to familiarize yourself with the dataset by opening it in your browser: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/feed/v1.0/summary/significant_week.geojson.

What is the structure of the data?
- How many earthquakes does it list?
- How would you grab the first earthquake?
  - How would you grab it's title?
  - How would you grab it's geological coordinates:
    - latitude?
    - longitude?
  - When did it happen?
    - How many hours ago is that?

Now, take a moment to familiarize yourself with the layout in index.html.

Your short term goal is to render each title to the "info" section of the page (see the commented example in your HTML)
- Psuedo Code:
  - grab the data from the USGS endpoint.
  - loop over it
  - add each title to the page

Part 2. Add Google Maps

Your next goal is to integrate Google Maps:
- Follow the tutorial at Google Maps Javascript API
  - Note that you will need to sign up for an API key. (See index.html#L13)
  - Be VERY careful when you copy paste code!
- Please center your map on San Francisco: { lat: -34.397, lng: 150.644}

Part 3. Add pins to your map

Once you've got the map to show up, your next goal is to drop a single pin on San Francisco. This is a sanity check.

Next, can you add only the first earthquake to the map?
Can you add pins for all the earthquakes to the map?

Part 4. Refactor to use underscore.js for templating.

Building up an html string in javascript is no fun. The rows in the "info" column are already pretty unwieldy. Before we extend our html any further, let's refactor to use templates. It will make our life a lot easier.

Add an underscore template below the body tag.
When the page loads, grab the template and compile it.
Then, use your compiled-template each time you want to add a new "info" row to the page.

Stretch:

Extend your template:

Calculate how long ago the quake occured and add it to the page. E.g. "28 hours ago".
Parse the title to only include the location, E.g. Instead of "M 4.2 - 1km ESE of Fontana, California", it should just say "Fontana, California"
Create a visual indicator of the magnitude of a quake. For instance, maybe a 4.0 is indicated by a "yellow" dot, a 5.0 by an "orange" dot, and anything larger is "red".

SJ-2015 / geoquakes