TopoJSON (Topology-Aware JSON)

TopoJSON was invented by Mike Bostock, the author of D3.js, to solve a simple problem: in GeoJSON neighboring polygons store their shared border twice. TopoJSON moves all the lines into a common array of arcs that the objects then refer to. On top of that, coordinates are rounded to an integer grid and written as increments — the file gets sharply lighter.

The format is taken for web graphics and analytics: choropleths in D3, interactive atlases, boundary maps in Observable, lightweight layers for offline applications. The second motive is simplification: during generalization the shared borders move together, and no gaps appear between neighboring districts.

The output is a single document: every layer becomes a separate object inside it — roads, buildings, water and so on — and object attributes are preserved. Coordinates are in WGS84, up to 100,000 objects per layer. The topology is built by our own code, with no external dependencies.

The price of compactness is the rounding of coordinates. The grid step depends on the size of the area: for a district it is on the order of a meter, for a country hundreds of meters. For a web map that is invisible; for precise measurements take GeoJSON or GeoPackage.