BAS Embedded Maps Service

Simple embeddable maps for visualising a feature on a suitable basemap.

Overview

Note: This project is focused on needs within the British Antarctic Survey. It has been open-sourced in case it is of interest to others. Some resources, indicated with a '🛡' or '🔒' symbol, can only be accessed by BAS staff or project members respectively. Contact the Project Maintainer to request access.

This project provides a service for applications to embed simple maps of the Polar Regions.

• maps are embedded via an iframe and the display of features is controlled by query parameters
• maps use a basemap based on the feature geometry (i.e. if in the Antarctic, an Antarctic basemap)
• maps use fixed and minimal map controls and feature symbology

Status

The initial version of this service is intended for use in the ADD Metadata Toolbox 🛡️ only

Usage

The service supports four map projections that are automatically selected based on the provided geometry:

• Antarctic projection (latitude ≤ -60°)
• Arctic projection (latitude ≥ 60°)
• World projection (latitudes between -60° and 60°)
• South Georgia projection (latitude between -55.200717 and -53.641972 and longitude between -38.643677 and -35.271423)

Maps can be configured using the following query parameters:

View Configuration:

• center: Initial center coordinates [longitude, latitude] array[number, number]
• zoom: Initial zoom level number
• scale: Initial scale level number
• bbox: Bounding box coordinates [minX, minY, maxX, maxY] array[number, number, number, number]
• show-region: Whether to zoom to the basemap region boolean

Asset Display:

• asset-id: Asset ID to display on the map string
• show-asset-popup: Whether to show the asset popup boolean

UI Controls:

• globe-overview: Whether to show a globe overview boolean
• hide-ui: Whether to hide the map controls boolean
• show-full-screen: Whether to enable fullscreen mode boolean

For an Antarctic map:

<iframe 
  src="https://embedded-maps.data.bas.ac.uk/v1/?center=[-180, -90]&zoom=6&globe_overview=true" 
  style="border:none;"
  allowfullscreen="true"
  allow="fullscreen">
</iframe>

Note: To enable fullscreen functionality, the allowfullscreen and allow="fullscreen" attributes must be added to the iframe element.

Implementation

App

The application is built using React and the ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript. Key features include:

• Automatic projection selection based on geometry location
• Support for different basemaps optimized for Antarctic, Arctic, and World views
• Built-in map controls (zoom, home)
• Optional globe overview
• Loading states and error handling

Basemaps

This service uses basemaps as determined by MAGIC/esri#86 🛡️.

Each projection comes with an optimized basemap and view configuration for the best visualization of features in that region.

Setup

Terraform

Terraform resources are defined in provisioning/terraform/.

Access to the BAS AWS account 🛡️ is required to provision these resources. Docker and Docker Compose are recommended but not required for running Terraform.

$ cd provisioning/terraform
$ docker compose run terraform

$ terraform init
$ terraform ...

Terraform remote state

State information for this project is stored remotely using a Backend.

Specifically the AWS S3 backend as part of the BAS Terraform Remote State 🛡️ project.

Remote state storage will be automatically initialised when running terraform init. Any changes to remote state will be automatically saved to the remote backend, there is no need to push or pull changes.

Remote state authentication

Permission to read and/or write remote state information for this project is restricted to authorised users. Contact the BAS Web & Applications Team to request access.

See the BAS Terraform Remote State 🛡️ project for how these permissions to remote state are enforced.

Developing

To set up the project locally, follow these steps:

npm install
npm run dev

Note: Node.js is required to run the project.

Testing

This project uses Playwright for end-to-end testing, including visual regression testing. Tests run in a containerized environment that includes a virtual framebuffer (xvfb) to support WebGL for ArcGIS map testing.

Running Tests

# Run all tests
npm run test:e2e

# Update snapshots when UI changes are expected
npm run test:e2e:update

# Run specific tests using grep patterns
TEST_GREP="Map Controls and Parameters" npm run test:e2e    # Run a test suite
TEST_GREP="MapControls.spec" npm run test:e2e              # Run a specific file
TEST_GREP="@accessibility" npm run test:e2e                 # Run tests with a specific tag

The TEST_GREP environment variable supports:

• Test suite names (e.g., "Map Controls and Parameters")
• Test file names (e.g., "MapControls.spec")
• Test tags (e.g., "@accessibility")
• Regular expressions for more complex patterns

All these patterns can also be used with npm run test:e2e:update to update snapshots for specific tests.

Visual Regression Testing

The project includes visual regression testing where screenshots are compared against stored snapshots. When making UI changes:

1. Make your UI changes
2. Run tests (npm run test:e2e)
3. If tests fail due to visual differences:
   • Review the differences in the test report
   • If changes are expected, update snapshots: npm run test:e2e:update
   • If changes are unexpected, fix the UI issues

Snapshots are stored in .test/spec/snapshots and must be explicitly updated when UI changes are intended.

Health monitoring

$ENDPOINT/meta/health.json provides service health information formatted according to the api-health-check specification. This endpoint should be used to monitor the health of this service.

Deployment

The application will be automatically deployed to S3 using Continuous Deployment.

Continuous Deployment

A Continuous Deployment process using GitLab's CI/CD platform is configured in .gitlab-ci.yml.

Project maintainer

Mapping and Geographic Information Centre (MAGIC), British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

Project lead: @felnne.

License

Copyright (c) 2024-2025 UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.