Supported Languages

Support for the following scripting languages is available:

  • Python
  • JavaScript
  • Groovy
  • Beanshell
  • Ruby

Adding support for additional languages is relatively straight forward. The requirements for adding a new language are:

  1. The language has an implementation that runs on the Java virtual machine
  2. The language runtime provides a JSR-223 compliant script engine

GeoScript

GeoScript is a project that adds scripting capabilities to the GeoTools library. It can be viewed as bindings for GeoTools in various other languages that are supposed on the JVM. It is the equivalent of the various language bindings that GDAL and OGR provide.

Currently GeoScript is available for the following languages:

The associated GeoServer scripting extension for these languages come with GeoScript for that language enabled. This means that when writing scripts one has access to the GeoScript modules and packages like they would any other standard library package.

Those languages that don’t have a GeoScript implementation can still implement the same functionality that GeoScript provides but must do it against the GeoTools api directly. The downside being that usually the GeoTools api is much more verbose than the GeoScript equivalent. But the upside is that going straight against the GeoTools api is usually more efficient.

Therefore GeoScript can be viewed purely as a convenience for script writers.