Contribute plugins to our open source SDKs
By: Langston Smith
Retrieve and draw GeoJSON data for your Android applications using our GeoJSON plugin. You can fetch the data via a URL, a file stored in the app, or a file stored somewhere on the device. A huge 🙌 goes to Behrouz Khezry, an Android developer based in Iran, who contributed the plugin.
Behrouz uses our Android SDK to render Mapbox vector tilesets in his mapping projects. He also frequently uses Mapbox Studio because it allows him to load multiple data formats as layers within a custom map style that he can then add into a mobile application. Because GeoJSON is a data format we use extensively in our SDK and API services for powerful features like data-driven styling, he saw an opportunity to improve his workflow with a plugin. All Mapbox users can access his work and contribute their own ideas — the value of having open source SDKs is the feedback we get from our community.
“One of the great things about the SDK is that it’s well-documented. When I wanted to contribute, there were step-by-step instructions to follow. To get started, I would recommend studying other Mapbox plugins published on Github. When I started the GeoJSON plugin, I studied the Traffic plugin very closely.”
Follow Behrouz Khezry on Twitter and Github, and check out his latest projects.
Why plugins?
Splitting specific functionality into plugins makes our Map SDK lighter and more nimble for you to use; it also lets us iterate faster. We can release plugins more often than the SDK, which requires a slower pace because of its larger codebase.
The Mapbox Android team builds plugins, but the plugins repository is also an open-source project similar to our other SDKs. Plugins’ lightweight nature makes them simpler to contribute and more efficient to review, so we can help you along the way.
Have an idea you want to contribute?
Explore our other plugins and read the contribution guide to learn how to get started. Let us know what you’re building on Twitter with the tag #BuiltwithMapbox.
New GeoJSON plugin for Android was originally published in Points of interest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.