To develop the Chicago Bike Map app, I had a problem I thought would be simple to solve: load train lines into a Leaflet-powered map. I had the train lines stored as a polyline shapefile but Leaflet can only read the GeoJSON format or a string of geographic coordinates representing lines.

I eventually found a solution (I can’t remember how) and I need to share it with you. The converter can do more than ESRI shapefiles to GeoJSON. It can reproject the data in the conversion. It can convert from several formats to several other formats.

The site is called MyGeodata Converter. You upload a ZIP file of geographic files – .shp and its companion files (.prj, .dbf, .shx), .kml, and .gpx. Let’s take the Chicago Transit Authority train lines shapefile straight from the City of Chicago’s open data portal. It downloads as a zipped collection of a shapefile and its buddies and we can take this file straight to the Converter and upload it. The Converter will unzip it and read the data; it will even identify the projection system (for Chicago-based geographic data, its common to use NAD83 Illinois StatePlane East FIPS 1201 Feet (SRID 102671, the same as SRID 3435).

The Converter will convert to one of the following formats, with same or new projection; accepts SQL statements to extract a subset of data:

  • ESRI shapefile
  • GML
  • KML, KMZ
  • GeoJSON
  • Microstation DGN
  • MapInfo File
  • GPX
  • CSV