Getting Started with Geotools: Load and Visualize Shapefiles Quickly

Geotools is a Java library that provides a rich set of classes and methods for processing spatial data and implements the OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) standards, making it a core component for many open‑source GIS tools such as uDig and GeoServer.

The official site (https://geotools.org/) offers a quickstart guide; instead of the Maven quickstart shown there, the author creates a Spring Boot project via Spring Initializr, adds the basic web starter, and prepares the project for Geotools.

In pom.xml the following sections are added:

<properties>
    <java.version>1.8</java.version>
    <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
    <geotools.version>26-SNAPSHOT</geotools.version>
</properties>

<repositories>
    <repository>
        <id>osgeo</id>
        <name>OSGeo Release Repository</name>
        <url>https://repo.osgeo.org/repository/release/</url>
        <snapshots><enabled>false</enabled></snapshots>
        <releases><enabled>true</enabled></releases>
    </repository>
    <repository>
        <id>osgeo-snapshot</id>
        <name>OSGeo Snapshot Repository</name>
        <url>https://repo.osgeo.org/repository/snapshot/</url>
        <snapshots><enabled>true</enabled></snapshots>
        <releases><enabled>false</enabled></releases>
    </repository>
</repositories>

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.geotools</groupId>
        <artifactId>gt-shapefile</artifactId>
        <version>${geotools.version}</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.geotools</groupId>
        <artifactId>gt-swing</artifactId>
        <version>${geotools.version}</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>junit</groupId>
        <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
        <version>4.13.1</version>
        <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

After Maven resolves the dependencies, a Java class named Quickstart is created with the following code:

package com.badao.geotoolsdemo;

import java.io.File;
import org.geotools.data.FileDataStore;
import org.geotools.data.FileDataStoreFinder;
import org.geotools.data.simple.SimpleFeatureSource;
import org.geotools.map.FeatureLayer;
import org.geotools.map.Layer;
import org.geotools.map.MapContent;
import org.geotools.styling.SLD;
import org.geotools.styling.Style;
import org.geotools.swing.JMapFrame;
import org.geotools.swing.data.JFileDataStoreChooser;

public class Quickstart {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        // Open a file chooser for shapefiles
        File file = JFileDataStoreChooser.showOpenFile("shp", null);
        if (file == null) {
            return;
        }
        FileDataStore store = FileDataStoreFinder.getDataStore(file);
        SimpleFeatureSource featureSource = store.getFeatureSource();

        // Create map content and add the shapefile layer
        MapContent map = new MapContent();
        map.setTitle("Quickstart");
        Style style = SLD.createSimpleStyle(featureSource.getSchema());
        Layer layer = new FeatureLayer(featureSource, style);
        map.addLayer(layer);

        // Display the map
        JMapFrame.showMap(map);
    }
}

Running the main method opens a dialog to select a .shp file. The article explains that a shapefile consists of three mandatory files: .shp (geometry), .shx (spatial index), and .dbf (attribute data). A sample Chinese provincial boundary shapefile is provided (https://download.csdn.net/download/BADAO_LIUMANG_QIZHI/15785012), with the caution that file names and paths must not contain Chinese characters.

After selecting a valid shapefile, the map window displays the vector data, demonstrating a complete end‑to‑end workflow for loading and visualizing shapefiles with Geotools.