h-geo

h-geo is a simple, open format for publishing WGS84 geographic coordinates. h-geo is one of several open microformat draft standards suitable for embedding data in HTML.

h-geo is the microformats2 update to geo. It is most commonly used as part of an h-card or h-event.

Status

This is a Draft Specification

Participate

IRC: #microformats on Libera

Editor

Tantek Çelik (Editor)

License

Per CC0, to the extent possible under law, the editors have waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work. In addition, as of 2024-12-15, the editors have made this specification available under the Open Web Foundation Agreement Version 1.0.

Example

Here is a simple h-geo example:

<p class="h-geo">
  <span class="p-latitude">-27.116667</span>,
  <span class="p-longitude">-109.366667</span>
</p>

Parsed JSON:

{
  "items": [
    {
      "type": [
        "h-geo"
      ],
      "properties": {
        "latitude": [
          "-27.116667"
        ],
        "longitude": [
          "-109.366667"
        ],
        "name": [
          "-27.116667, -109.366667"
        ]
      }
    }
  ]
}

Get started

The class h-geo is a root class name that indicates the presence of an h-geo.

p-latitude, p-longitude and p-altitude classnames define an element as a property of the h-geo.

See microformats2-parsing to learn more about property classnames.

Properties

h-geo properties, inside an element with class h-geo:

• p-latitude - decimal latitude
• p-longitude - decimal longitude
• p-altitude - decimal altitude

All properties are optional.

Status

h-geo is a microformats.org draft specification. Public discussion on h-geo takes place on h-geo-feedback and the #microformats irc channel on libera.chat.

h-geo is ready to use and implemented in the wild, but for backwards compatibility you should also mark h-geos up with classic geo classnames.

Property Details

p-altitude refers to the distance in metres from the nominal sea level along the tangent of the earth’s curve, i.e. the geoid height. For more information refer to the WGS84 specification and the geo URI scheme.

FAQ

How should I mark up lat/long coordinates without them looking messy and confusing?

Unless your content is targeted at an audience with a high leg authoring p-latitude and p-longitude as plain numbers on a webpage may not be the best approach. In addition to this there may be accessibility issues due to the potentially long strings of numbers being read out.

You could present the coordinates in a more human-readable form, retaining the decimal coordinates inside data value attributes:

<p class="h-geo">
  <data class="p-longitude" value="-27.116667">27° 7′ 0″ S</data>,
  <data class="p-latitude" value="-109.366667">109° 22′ 0″ W</data>
</p>

Alternatively you could not show coordinates at all and simply show a human-readable representation of the location, with the lat/long in value attributes of empty data elements.

Examples in the Wild

• … add any h-geo examples you find in the wild

Validating

Test and validate microformats2 markup in general with:

• https://pin13.net/mf2/ - enter your markup directly
• https://pin13.net/ - enter a URL to a page to test where it says "Microformats Parser"

Backward Compatibility

Publisher Compatibility

For backward compatibility, you may wish to use classic geo classnames in addition to the more future-proof h-geo properties, for example:

<p class="h-geo geo">
  <span class="p-latitude latitude">-27.116667</span>,
  <span class="p-longitude longitude">-109.366667</span>
</p>

Parser Compatibility

Microformats parsers SHOULD detect classic properties only if a classic root class name is found and parse them as microformats2 properties.

If an "h-geo" is found, don't look for an "geo" on the same element.

Compatibility root class name: geo

Properties: (parsed as p- plain text unless otherwise specified)

• latitude
• longitude

Background

h-geo is based on the WGS84 standard, as well as existing geo specification, which was extracted from hCard in order to allow it to be used for applications other than contact information.

See Also

• microformats2
• h-card and h-event often contain h-geo
• h-adr is used to mark up human-readable structured addresses