[OpenLayers-Users] Selecting a country

[Christian López Espínola]

You should use the webservices at http://www.geonames.org/export

As example, I live here :-)
http://ws.geonames.org/findNearbyPlaceNameJSON?lat=37.867&lng=-5.6

You can make great things using this and an AJAX request.
Hope this helps.

On Jan 7, 2008 7:05 AM, David Pruitt <d.pru at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>  Well, there are a few reasons why using MapServer is out of the question.
>
> 1.  I am running my mapping application on some server space that I have on
> the computer science servers here on campus.  Although I am granted server
> space, I obviously have no ability to change the settings to Apache or put
> MapServer into the cgi-bin of Apache.  Therefore, although I can run PHP
> scripts (which I do), running something like MapServer is out of the
> question.
>
> 2.  I am running Apache on my personal machine....and so of course I could
> install MapServer on here, but my personal machine is not the "production
> environment"...it is simply the testing environment.  The production
> environment is my server space on the CS servers - and if I can't run
> MapServer on those servers, there is no point running it on my test server
> (my personal computer).
>
> 3.  Even if I did have access to a production server where I could configure
> Apache how I wanted it to be - I am completely unfamiliar with MapServer and
> WMS requests - although I am very familiar with HTTP requests and networking
> in general.  WMS is simply a protocol I don't know.  In addition, I don't
> know how to create a map that would work with MapServer.
>
> Consequently:
>
> I am currently using the free map available at:
>
> http://labs.metacarta.com/wms/vmap0?
>
> Which is also used in many of the OpenLayers demos.  I am thinking, however,
> of using Google Maps possibly, but I am not sure yet.
>
> So this is my dilemma:  Under these circumstances, how can I recognize which
> country a user has clicked on the map?
>
> Several months ago at work I made a simple mapping application in Flash (at
> which time I didn't even know OpenLayers or MapServer existed).  For that
> mapping application we simply overlayed an image of each country on top of
> itself on the world map, and then the overlayed image acted as a button -
> thus making it quite simple to tell which country had been clicked.  I was
> hoping to do something similar with OpenLayers in this mapping application
> that I am currently building, but using the "Features" in OpenLayers to
> create polygons that I could overlay over each country - and essentially
> have each polygon act as a button so I could tell which country had been
> clicked.  I noticed however, that if I held my mouse button down on one of
> these polygons, I could no longer pan around the map...which is definitely a
> problem.
>
> How does the example map at http://world.freemap.in/ accomplish this task?
> I looked at the code, and although I am new to OpenLayers and this whole WMS
> thing...it seems like it is making some WMS requests to a MapServer server.
>
> Thanks for any help.
>
> David
>
> > Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 06:42:27 +0100
> > From: eric.c2c at gmail.com
> > To: d.pru at hotmail.com
> > Subject: Re: [OpenLayers-Users] Selecting a country
> > CC: users at openlayers.org
> >
> > On Jan 7, 2008 3:22 AM, David Pruitt <d.pru at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Let's say I have a user who is looking at my map, and clicks on a
> specific
> > > country. What is the best way to recognize which country he clicked on?
> > >
> > > I thought using features would be good, but a user can't pan around the
> map
> > > if he/she is holding down the mouse button on a feature.
> > >
> > > Is there any way to accomplish this WITHOUT using MapServer or GeoServer
> or
> > > something of that sort?
> >
> > Hello
> >
> > If the countries aren't rendered by the browser (and therefore you
> > don't have information about these countries on the client side) then
> > you need to send a request to some service to get information on the
> > clicked country. Have you had some other solution in mind?
> >
> > --
> > Eric
>
>
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-- 
Regards,

Christian López Espínola