By default the examples use the ol.js script, which is compiled using Closure Compiler's ADVANCED mode. By appending ?mode=simple or ?mode=whitespace to the URL you can make the example page load the ol-simple.js or ol-whitespace.js builds instead of ol.js. As their names suggest it, ol-simple.js and ol-whitespace.js are compiled using the SIMPLE and WHITESPACE modes, respectively. And by appending ?mode=debug or ?mode=raw you will make the example work in full debug mode.

For example: http://openlayers.github.com/ol3/master/examples/full-screen.html?mode=simple.

Build OpenLayers 3

Run build.py:

$ ./build.py

Windows users should run build instead.

Run Examples locally

Run the Plovr web server with:

$ ./build.py serve

Windows users should run build serve instead.

Then, either open one of the example html files from the examples directory directly in your browser, or start a simple webserver, for example:

$ python -mSimpleHTTPServer

and explore the examples/ directory, for example by opening http://localhost:8000/examples/side-by-side.html.

You can turn off compilation by appending ?mode=RAW to the URL, for example http://localhost:8000/examples/side-by-side.html?mode=RAW. (By default mode is ADVANCED.)

Run examples without Plovr:

The examples can also be run against the ol.js standalone lib, without Plovr, just like the examples hosted on GitHub. Start by executing the hostexamples build target:

$ ./build.py hostexamples

This will build ol.js, ol-simple.js, ol-whitespace.js, and ol.css, create the examples index page, and copy everything to build/gh-pages/<branch_name>/, where <branch_name> is the name of the local checked out Git branch. You can now open the examples index page in the browser, for example: http://localhost:8000/build/gh-pages/master/examples/. To make an example use ol-simple.js or ol-whitespace.js instead of ol.js append ?mode=simple or ?mode=whitespace to the example URL. And append ?mode=debug or ?mode=raw to make the example work in full debug mode.

Run tests

Run the plovr web server (see above), and either open the test/ol.html file in the browser (e.g. http://localhost:8000/test/ol.html), or run ./build.py test on the console (headless testing with PhantomJS, make sure to install it first from http://phantomjs.org/download.html).

Run the linter

First, install the Closure Linter. Then:

$ ./build.py lint

Run the precommit hook before pushing a commit:

First, install the latest version of JSDoc3. Then:

$ ./build.py precommit

This makes sure that your commit won't break the build. It also runs JSDoc3 to make sure that there are no invalid API doc directives.

Add examples

The examples are located in the examples directory. Adding a new example implies creating two files in this directory, an .html file and a .js file. See examples/full-screen.html and examples/full-screen.js for instance.

The .html file needs to include a script tag with loader.js?id=<example_name> as its src. For example, if the two files for the example are myexample.js and myexample.html then the script tag's src should be set to myexample.

build.py serve should be stopped and restarted for the loader.js?id=<example_name> script tag to refer to a valid URL. build.py serve triggers the examples target which creates a Plovr JSON file for each example.

A note on the use of the goog namespace in the examples:

Short story: the OL3 examples should not use the goog namespace, except for goog.require.

Longer story:

We want that the OL3 examples work in multiple modes: with the standalone lib (which has implications of the symbols and properties we export), with Plovr in ADVANCED mode, and with Plovr in RAW (debug) mode.

Running the examples with Plovr makes it mandatory to declare dependencies with goog.require statements. And for the examples to also run with the standalone lib we export goog.require as the null function.

Exporting goog.require has a side effect: it adds the goog namespace object to the global object. This is why we can, for example, have if (goog.DEBUG) statements in the code of the examples.