[Mapserver-users] php mapscript as data extraction utility.

[Jason M. Nielsen]

I was going to write some simple tools for performing basic tasks on data such
as clip out a bounding area of X list of rasters then dump this to a file and
spit out a webpage with a URL for access to the data.

After getting mapscript working and playing with it though I wondered if using
mapserver directly would be the best route.

Example application might be a display in which you draw a bounding box. Those
coordinates are read and placed in fields. You then tell it clip and mapserver
using a tileindex proceeds to produce this map. The catch might be though that I
want to be able to specify things like pixel size, coordinate system, format, no
data color and so on. This is pretty straight forward just doing something
directly with the likes of gdal_merge.py and such but with mapserver I dont see
how one would specify things like pixel size. With regard to it specifically it
appears I would have to determine proper dpi for the desired pixel size.

Anyhow, the real question is simply this. What are everyones recommendations? Go
with mapserver? Make utility pages granting access directly to the command line
utilities? Or perhaps mapserver to gain things such as the coordinates and
seeding fields but ultimately call the commands directly?

These will be local only so security while always a concern isnt too big of one.

Thanks.