OpenLayers & GeoJSON files

Question

After some hunting, it seems that if I have an a geojson file, I NEED the data and map to be on a server in order to view this in OpenLayers because of the protocol class. I saw an example where I can basically read the file as a javascript object by inserting it into my code. But there must be a way to simple throw my .json file without a server - right? I was able to do it with leaflet... I'm a newbie at this so any help would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

If by "there must be a way to simple throw my .json file", you mean load your .json file on to your map as features...

You can do it like this:

vectorLayer = new OpenLayers.Layer.Vector("MyLayer");
map.addLayer(vectorLayer);

function handler(request) {

    var geojson_format = new OpenLayers.Format.GeoJSON({
        'internalProjection': map.baseLayer.projection,
        'externalProjection': new OpenLayers.Projection("EPSG:4326")
    });

    vectorLayer.addFeatures(geojson_format.read(request.responseText));
}

var request = OpenLayers.Request.GET({
    url: "geojson.json",
    callback: handler
});