GeoHack URL (.url)
A GeoHack URL (.url) is a Windows internet-shortcut file that stores a link generated by GeoHack, a MediaWiki tool that turns a Wikipedia article's coordinate template into a page of links to different mapping services.
At a glance
| Extension | .url |
| Encoding | text |
History
GeoHack is a MediaWiki community tool derived from an earlier "gis" extension by Egil Kvaleberg; it is maintained by Wikipedia contributors (credited maintainers include Magnus Manske, Dispenser and Kolossos) and hosted on Wikimedia's Toolforge infrastructure. No single founding date or company is documented, since it is a volunteer-maintained tool rather than a commercial product.
Where it is used
Wikipedia articles with a coordinate template render a small "Coordinates" link that opens a GeoHack page; that page in turn links out to many different map providers for the same point. Pasting one of those GeoHack links — or a .url shortcut file saved from one — into RouteConverter turns it back into a single map position with the Wikipedia article's title as its description.
Structure
A .url file is a plain-text Windows "Internet Shortcut" — an [InternetShortcut] section with a URL= line. The URL itself carries GeoHack's own query parameters: params= encodes latitude and longitude as degrees followed by N/S and E/W letters (for example 52.5_N_13.4_E), and pagename= carries the underscore-encoded Wikipedia article title used as the point's description.
How widespread
GeoHack itself is a live, actively maintained Wikipedia tool, not a legacy or discontinued one; RouteConverter's own writer creates a single-position shortcut by default (its maximum position count is a preference, defaulting to one), so it is meant for pulling one Wikipedia coordinate at a time rather than an entire route.
RouteConverter support
| Reads | GeoHack URL |
| Writes | GeoHack URL |
RouteConverter reads GeoHack URLs and also writes them back out as a .url shortcut file; on write, if given more than one position it also includes the position immediately before the requested range, so a subsequent hop can still be understood as continuing from the previous route segment.