I’ve now spent a LOT of time using JOSM, and it is one of the best applications i have ever used, of any kind. With left hand on the keyboard, right on the mouse, you can do quality editing with great speed and accuracy. Advice for newbies: Install the “utilsplugin2” right now, then “buildings_tools” for buildings, and “FastDraw” for streams and ponds.

Eventually, though, you find yourself doing a lot of the same steps over again. One thing JOSM does NOT have is a “macro” ability to record and play back commands. It does, however, have a scripting plugin! (Thank you “Gubaer”, author of the plugin!) I have just begun to work with its Javascript API, which has decent docs but very few examples. I will give some examples here in my diary of of scripts i’ve written, in case they are useful!

As a first example, renaming streets. The JOSM validator will warn you about abbreviated English street names (“Main St”) but it won’t automatically fix them for you. I wrote a script which does that. Just install the scripting plugin, open the scripting console, paste in this script and press “Run”.

Note that this not a shining example of great code, just a rough script. As an exercise for the reader, you could extend it to also handle “Blvd” for “Boulevard”.

//
// Look through all data layers, looking for abbreviated street names and
// replace them with the full string, e.g. "Rd" -> "Road".
//

var util = require("josm/util");
var command = require("josm/command");
var ScriptingConsole = org.openstreetmap.josm.plugins.scripting.ui.console.ScriptingConsole;
var console = ScriptingConsole.instance.scriptLog.logWriter;

for (i = 0; i < josm.layers.length; i++) {
    var layer = josm.layers.get(i);
    if (layer.name.substring(0, 4) != "Data")
      continue;
    var dataset = layer.data;
    var result = dataset.query("type:way");
    var renames = 0;
    console.println("number of ways: " + result.length);
    for (j = 0; j < result.length; j++) {
        var way = result[j];
        var name = way.get("name");
        if (name == null) continue;
        if (name.length() < 4) continue;

        var s = name.slice(-3);
        if (s == " Tr" || s == " rd" || s == " Ct" || s == "Ave" || s == "Cir" || s == " Dr" || s == " Rd" || s == " Ln" || s== " Pl" || s == " St" || s == "Hwy" || s == " Wy") {
          var s2 = name.slice(0, name.length() - 3);
          if (s == " Tr") s2 += " Trail";
          if (s == " rd") s2 += " Road";
          if (s == " Ct") s2 += " Court";
          if (s == "Ave") s2 += "Avenue";
          if (s == "Cir") s2 += "Circle";
          if (s == " Dr") s2 += " Drive";
          if (s == " Rd") s2 += " Road";
          if (s == " Ln") s2 += " Lane";
          if (s == " Pl") s2 += " Place";
          if (s == " St") s2 += " Street";
          if (s == "Hwy") s2 += "Highway";
          if (s == " Wy") s2 += " Way";
 
          console.println("  rename [" + name + "] to [" + s2 + "]");
          // create and apply a undoable/redoable command
          layer.apply( command.change(dataset.way(way.id), {tags: {name: s2}}) );
          renames++;
          way.setModified(true);
        }
    }
    console.println("renames:" + renames);
}