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Jun 25, 2026

Heratio Help Center article. Category: Plugin Reference.

GIS Spatial Search - User Guide

Find Records by Where They Are on the Map

The GIS module adds geographic search to the catalogue. Where archival descriptions have been given coordinates, you can search them by drawing a geographic box, by setting a centre point and radius, or by pulling the whole set out as GeoJSON for use in a map.

Coordinates are held in a dedicated geolocation table linked to each record, so spatial search works even though the base description record has no built-in location columns.

Overview

The module provides three administrator screens:

  • Bounding box - find geolocated records that fall inside a north / south / east / west rectangle.
  • Radius - set a centre point and a distance in kilometres.
  • GeoJSON - export geolocated records as a GeoJSON FeatureCollection, or view them, for plotting on a map.

Each result carries the record's title, slug, latitude, and longitude, so it can be linked back to the full description.

Key features

  • Bounding-box search across north, south, east, and west coordinates (returns up to 500 records).
  • Radius search around a latitude / longitude centre point, with a configurable distance in kilometres.
  • GeoJSON output as a standard FeatureCollection of Point features, with each feature carrying the record id, title, and slug (returns up to 1,000 records).
  • Only records that have both a latitude and a longitude are included.
  • Admin-only; read-only against the catalogue.

How to use

All three screens live under the GIS area and require an administrator login.

Go to /admin/gis/bbox. Supply the bounds as query parameters - north, south, east, and west - for example /admin/gis/bbox?north=-25&south=-26&east=29&west=28. The screen returns the geolocated records inside that rectangle, with their coordinates and a link back to each record.

Go to /admin/gis/radius. Provide a centre point and distance as lat, lng, and radius (kilometres), for example /admin/gis/radius?lat=-25.7&lng=28.2&radius=10. The default radius is 10 km.

GeoJSON export and map view

Go to /admin/gis/geojson. Requesting the page as JSON returns a GeoJSON FeatureCollection - each feature is a Point with [longitude, latitude] coordinates and properties for the record id, title, and slug. Requesting it as a normal page returns a view of the same features. This output drops straight into any tool that reads GeoJSON.

Configuration

There are no module settings. To make a record searchable by location, it needs a latitude and a longitude recorded in its geolocation entry. Records without coordinates are simply skipped by every GIS screen.

Result counts are capped for performance - bounding-box returns up to 500 records and GeoJSON returns up to 1,000.

References

  • Source package: packages/ahg-gis/
  • GitHub issue: GH #577