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Currently, one example of a URL in one of our front-end apps is </div>
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<div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size:11pt" color="#000000"><b>From:</b> Richard Greenwood <richard.greenwood@gmail.com><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Friday, March 7, 2025 8:44 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> Rob Dennett <Rob.Dennett@twdb.texas.gov><br>
<b>Cc:</b> mapserver <mapserver-users@lists.osgeo.org><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [MapServer-users] Can MapServer cache directly to AWS S3?</font>
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<span style="font-size:12.0pt; font-weight:bold; color:red">External: Beware of links/attachments.
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<div dir="ltr">On Fri, Mar 7, 2025 at 7:29 AM Rob Dennett <<a href="mailto:Rob.Dennett@twdb.texas.gov">Rob.Dennett@twdb.texas.gov</a>> wrote:</div>
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So, can you have both the MapCache module and the MapServer CGI script running on the same Apache server?
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<div>Sure. There's no conflict. </div>
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Is there an example showing how to configure this? </div>
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<div>Look at the MapCache documentation. MapCache is configured with an xml file. If MapServer is on the same server then you'd have a statement in the the "source" section like:</div>
<div> <source name="something" type="wms"></div>
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<div> <url><a href="http://localhost/cgi-bin/mapserv.fcgi">http://localhost/cgi-bin/mapserv.fcgi</a></url></div>
<div> . . .</div>
<div> </source></div>
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We have a bunch of front ends which use our MapServer (it's customer-facing, too) and I am not clear if all those URLs would have to change.</div>
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<div>Your app makes requests to <a href="https://youserver/mapcache">https://youserver/mapcache</a> for tiles or
<a href="https://yourserver/cgi-bin/mapserv.fcgi">https://yourserver/cgi-bin/mapserv.fcgi</a> for non-tiles requests. MapCache is reading and writing to and from S3, your app is not directly access S3.</div>
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<div>Rich</div>
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<span style="font-size:12pt">Thanks,</span></div>
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Rob</div>
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<div id="x_m_4154713686534273295divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" color="#000000" style="font-size:11pt"><b>From:</b> Richard Greenwood <<a href="mailto:richard.greenwood@gmail.com" target="_blank">richard.greenwood@gmail.com</a>><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Friday, March 7, 2025 7:44 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> Rob Dennett <<a href="mailto:Rob.Dennett@twdb.texas.gov" target="_blank">Rob.Dennett@twdb.texas.gov</a>><br>
<b>Cc:</b> mapserver <<a href="mailto:mapserver-users@lists.osgeo.org" target="_blank">mapserver-users@lists.osgeo.org</a>><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [MapServer-users] Can MapServer cache directly to AWS S3?</font>
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<div dir="ltr">On Thu, Mar 6, 2025, 3:27 PM Rob Dennett via MapServer-users <<a href="mailto:mapserver-users@lists.osgeo.org" target="_blank">mapserver-users@lists.osgeo.org</a>> wrote:<br>
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Does MapCache have to be built from source? </div>
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<div dir="auto">Probably not. If you're on Linux it will be in your distribution's repo. Not sure about Windows or Mac. </div>
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Also, does it have to be it's own server?</div>
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<div dir="auto">MapCache is a module that the Apache web server runs. </div>
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It's not clear to me how it connects with MapServer. Is it the case that MapServer renders tiles as necessary based on requests and then MapCache serves those files if requested again?<br>
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No. Apache passes tile requests to MapCache. If MapCache has the tile it gets returned. If MapCache doesn't have the tile it makes a WMS request to MapServer, saves the tile in its cache and returns the tile to the web server. MapCache can save the tile on
the local file system, S3 or elsewhere. You configure where it saves the cached tiles.<br>
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As mentioned, MapServer is currently storing tiles in a directory mapped to S3 which is specified by IMAGEPATH.
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<div>Using MapCache you don't need IMAGEPATH.</div>
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These tiles are not pre-seeded, so I can't specify a particular raster or vector file to serve from S3. I don't think I understand how caching is supposed to work with S3 in the way we're doing it. Can you simply specify a folder in S3 where cached data lives
and have MapServer render anything that doesn't exist yet?</div>
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<div>If you are trying to serve tiles directly from S3 by making tile requests directly to the S3 bucket that is a whole different thing and not supported by MapCache.</div>
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<div>HTH,</div>
<div>Rich</div>
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<span style="font-size:12pt">Thanks,</span></div>
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Rob</div>
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<font face="Calibri, sans-serif" color="#000000" style="font-size:11pt"><b>From:</b> MapServer-users <<a href="mailto:mapserver-users-bounces@lists.osgeo.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">mapserver-users-bounces@lists.osgeo.org</a>> on behalf of Scott via
MapServer-users <<a href="mailto:mapserver-users@lists.osgeo.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">mapserver-users@lists.osgeo.org</a>><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, March 5, 2025 11:50 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> <a href="mailto:mapserver-users@lists.osgeo.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">
mapserver-users@lists.osgeo.org</a> <<a href="mailto:mapserver-users@lists.osgeo.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">mapserver-users@lists.osgeo.org</a>><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [MapServer-users] Can MapServer cache directly to AWS S3?</font>
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<div>External: Beware of links/attachments.<br>
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You can store any raster/vector file format supported by GDAL on S3 and<br>
use it via MapServer. Note the /vsis3 virtual connection:<br>
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Raster:<br>
DATA "/vsis3/myS3Bucket/raster.tif"<br>
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Vector:<br>
CONNECTION "/vsis3/myS3Bucket/vector.fgb"<br>
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MapServer is definitely a WMS server. Any OGC compliant WMS url can be<br>
parsed and processed. Using MapCache along MapServer is highly desirable<br>
as all subsequent WMS requests are cached. Further, you can seed any<br>
cache directly with MapCache.<br>
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Scott<br>
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On 3/5/25 07:57, Rob Dennett via MapServer-users wrote:<br>
> Is it possible to cache tiles to and serve them from S3 buckets? We<br>
> currently mount S3 folders in EC2 instances one of which is the<br>
> directory we specify in MAP/IMAGEPATH, but it requires us to use s3fs-<br>
> fuse and that means we have to use EC2 as opposed to Fargate, which we<br>
> would prefer. Can MapServer act as a client to S3?<br>
><br>
> I have been looking at MapCache, and as far as I can tell, it's a<br>
> separate server that works alongside a WMS server, although I am not<br>
> sure that MapServer counts as a WMS server. We use it to serve geoJSON,<br>
> UTF grid, etc. Is it what we want to use for this?<br>
><br>
> Thanks,<br>
> Rob<br>
><br>
> _______________________________________________<br>
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<span class="x_gmail_signature_prefix">-- </span><br>
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<div dir="ltr">Richard W. Greenwood<br>
<a href="http://www.greenwoodmap.com" target="_blank">www.greenwoodmap.com</a></div>
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