A method and system are provided for attaching digital documents to physical objects. The system allows an author to divide a region on the map into hierarchical geographical contexts. One of the geographical context, Planes, are used to host photos of physical objects to which an author can attach documents. By indexing geographic contexts by GPS location, altitude, azimuth, and context path, the user application is able to navigate the geographic context by querying the backend servers for geographic context that matches the current device GPS location, altitude, and orientation. By keeping track of the context path as the user enters and exits geographic contexts, a user is able to enter a short relative ID to retrieve a document with that relative ID in the current context. This context-relative ID could be posted on any real physical object to provide a way to attach documents to real physical objects.
