Skip to main content
Version: 7.1.0

Getting started

How you add Turf to your project will dependend on your environment and tooling but here are some guidelines to get you started.

The source of truth for published versions of Turf is NPM. You are welcome to use other providers that republish these packages.

Installation​

In Node.js​

# get all of turf
npm install @turf/turf

# or get individual packages
npm install @turf/helpers
npm install @turf/buffer

As of v7, both CommonJS and ESM bundles are included.

In browser​

Whether downloading locally, or including a 3rd party version of turf directly, there are multiple CDN's to choose from and each has a URL scheme that allows you to specify what version you want, with some flexibility. Structure your URL as appropriate for your needs:

For example, download the latest minified version 7, and include it in a script tag. This will expose a global variable named turf.

<script src="turf.min.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

You can also include it directly from a CDN. This example specifies the latest version within v7.

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@turf/turf@7/turf.min.js"></script>

It is not recommended to use a CDN URL that gives you the latest bleeding edge version of Turf, especially in a production app. There are breaking changes to turf functions between major versions that can leave your app in a broken state because it always gives your browser users the latest version.

TypeScript​

TypeScript definitions are included and exported by each Turf module, except for GeoJSON type definitions (e.g. Polygon, FeatureCollection) which are provided by the @types/geojson package. Turf does not re-export these type definitionas. If you need them, you can import and use them directly, e.g. import { Polygon, FeatureCollection } from 'geojson'. You may need to install the @types/geojson package first.

Other languages​

Ports of Turf.js are available in:

  • Java (Android, Java SE)
  • Swift (iOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS, Linux)

    • Turf for Swift is experimental and its public API is subject to change. Please use with care.

  • Dart/Flutter (Dart Web, Dart Native; Flutter for iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, Linux, Web)

    • The Turf for Dart port is still in progress, the implementation status can be found in the README.

Data in Turf​

Turf uses GeoJSON for all geographic data. Turf expects the data to be standard WGS84 longitude, latitude coordinates. Check out geojson.io for a tool to easily create this data.

NOTE: Turf expects data in (longitude, latitude) order per the GeoJSON standard.

Most Turf functions work with GeoJSON features. These are pieces of data that represent a collection of properties (ie: population, elevation, zipcode, etc.) along with a geometry. GeoJSON has several geometry types such as:

  • Point
  • LineString
  • Polygon

Turf provides a few geometry functions of its own. These are nothing more than simple (and optional) wrappers that output plain old GeoJSON. For example, these two methods of creating a point are functionally equivalent:

// Note order: longitude, latitude.
var point1 = turf.point([-73.988214, 40.749128]);

var point2 = {
  type: "Feature",
  geometry: {
    type: "Point",
    // Note order: longitude, latitude.
    coordinates: [-73.988214, 40.749128],
  },
  properties: {},
};

Browser support​

Turf packages are compiled to target ES2017. However, the browser version of @turf/turf is transpiled to also include support for IE11. If you are using these packages and need to target IE11, please transpile the following packages as part of your build:

@turf/*
robust-predicates
rbush
tinyqueue