Getting the div screen location in Leaflet - leaflet

Question

I am working on a project using Leaflet. I want to place a label for objects on the map. I don’t want the label to appear on the map. I want the label placed above the map, but at the screen or div Left location from a latLng point.
I can’t seem to get the correct position using the functions available. Is there some example I can look at to give me insight? I would think Leaflet could do this.

Answer 1

The key here is to leverage the latLngToContainerPoint() method of L.Map - it will give you the pixel coordinates relative to the map container of the L.LatLng passed.
So create a container for a tick...
<div id="topbar"><span id="toptick">↓</span></div>
<div id="leaflet"></div>
...and use CSS to ensure it's on top of the map container, and has the same width. Then, run a function to translate the map point you want into an offset relative to the top-left corner of the map container...
function repositionEdges(){
var offset = map.latLngToContainerPoint(geopoint);
}
...run that after map initialization, and after every movement of the map...
repositionEdges();
map.on('move zoom', repositionEdges);
...and finally, inside that function, shift the tick horizontally tweaking its style...
function repositionEdges(){
var offset = map.latLngToContainerPoint(geopoint);
document.getElementById('toptick').style.left = offset.x + 'px';
}
You can see a working example at https://next.plnkr.co/edit/60qrWND50mCOQ11T?preview .
This is just one approach. The specific implementation will be different if you're using more than one point, or if you want to use <canvas> for drawing the ticks.
See also the graticule, edge scale bar and edge markers plugins from the Leaflet plugins list. Those plugins contain implementations of similar concepts.