At this point, we've gone over the foundation of OpenLayers. We've covered the core classes—Map, Controls, and Layers. The rest of this book will focus more on refining that core knowledge, expanding on concepts already introduced and delving a bit into more of the 'advanced' things we can do with the API.
We'll start diving into some of these advance topics starting with this chapter, covering the Vector Layer class. With it, our maps can be made even more interactive, responsive, and sleeker by showing and allowing interaction with vector data.
We'll go over how to create a vector layer, create and interact with objects in it, load data from external files (like KML), and more. Throughout this chapter, we'll go over many different types of examples and build upon them to demonstrate how the Vector Layer works.
In this chapter will cover the Vector Layer class, along with a couple of other related classes. We'll:
Discuss what the Vector Layer class is and see how it works
Cover properties, methods, and events of Vector Layer class
Go over the Feature and Geometry classes
Discuss how to create more advanced Vector layers
Demonstrate how to use the Strategy class
Learn about the Protocol class
Cover the Format class