19  Workshop Scope

Objective

Define the scope and objective of the workshop.

There’s no better way to learn than by doing.

In this workhop we will learn how to use extendr and create Rust-powered R package by creating a new package called {geohashrs}. The {geohashrs} R package will provide R bindings to the geohash crate.

Throughout the workshop we will touch on:

As much as this is about Rust, we are also working within the confines of R and thus, the two are inextricably linked.

What is geohashing?

  • Geohashes are a way to encode a location on earth as a string of 1 - 12 characters.
  • The more shared characters there are between two geohashes, the closes in physical space the geohashes are.
  • Used to find approximately near locations.
  • Used frequently in databases and web development to quickly query results.

The R package

The R package we will create will help us:

  • encode geohashes
  • find geohash neighbors
  • decoded geohash to x & y plus error terms
  • decode geohash into a bounding box