[fdo-users] General FDO queries

[Jason Birch]

Hi Chris,

To my knowledge, the FDO installed with Studio is not used for
interacting with the server.  It's there for creating packages and has
no relationship with the providers dialog.  Unfortunately, Studio's
dialog mechanism is proprietary and there is no known API for creating
or extending them.  You can disable the use of the dialog (reverting to
a generic FDO dialog box) by commenting out the appropriate section of
ProviderEditorMap.xml.  However, this only affects the connection
dialog, and it looks like you're wanting the behaviour of the Layer
Editor to change.

As far as the XML configuration file goes, have a look in the UnitTest
directory for some examples.  They seem to cover most of your comments.


http://trac.osgeo.org/fdo/browser/trunk/Providers/WMS/Src/UnitTest

The schema for this file appears to be here:

http://trac.osgeo.org/fdo/browser/trunk/Providers/WMS/Docs/XmlSchema

I'm not sure how these would be referenced in MapGuide; perhaps they
could be uploaded as ResourceContent?

It seems like most of the limitations that you're seeing are with
Studio's ability to configure the WMS provider rather than with the
provider itself.  If those XML files can be read as ResourceContent,
then you should be able to disable the Studio dialog for WMS, upload the
content through the generic UI, and be off to the races with multi-layer
sources, transparency, etc, etc.

Then we'll just have to wait for Studio to catch up with the
capabilities of the WMS provider, or add some custom dialogs to Web
Studio to support these additional items.

Jason


-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Tweedie
Subject: [fdo-users] General FDO queries

Hey guys, I have quite a few queries after diving into the FDO code. I
am certainly not a C guru, but have at least gotten 3.2.2 compiled from
source! This is leading on from a post i sent to mapguide-users a few
weeks back but have since gotten my hands a lot more dirty.

First and foremost ... what is the relationship between the Autodesk
Mapguide Studio FDO and the OSS Mapguide Server FDO? If i build a new
provider, does Studio need to reference it also? I am really at a loss
how the two co-exist at the moment. I am looking to modify in particular
the FDOWMS Layer configuration dialogs but are at a loss where to start.
I was initially thinking that the dialog's are created from the server
FDO but now i'm not so sure (perhaps these bugs lie with Autodesk and
not FDO??). Most of the following points are connected to the Studio
interface as this is what we need to change (although any workarounds
will be gratefully accepted!).

1. Remove dependancy on all WMS layers being image/png and allow the
client to choose an appropriate type from a dropdown of supported
formats. (See FDOWmsConnection.cpp Ln 657). The comments mention this
can be changed in the "FDO WMS Configuration file" ... where is this
magical file??

2. Use layer->GetTitle instead of layer->GetName when populating the
Studio "featureclass" dropdown. Currently you can expect a nice list of
say WMS_Schema:LayerID which isn't as helpful as the title. Minor fix
i'm sure.

3. Moving on from 2), make the featureclass dropdown a multi-select box.
I'm not sure what the correct term is, but basically you should be
allowed to select multiple WMS layers to form a mapguide "layer".
Currently this is not possible as its a 1:1 relationship. From what i
can see in the code, it makes allowances for multiples in the CURL
request code so it appears to be a matter of modifying the interface??
(see FdoWmsGetMap.cpp Ln 135)

4. Add a transparent checkbox to the config. If the user selects say
image/png or image/gif, give them the option of toggling the TRANSPARENT
KVP that is used to build the request URL. Currently its hardcoded to
false. Argh! (see FdoWMSGetMap.cpp Ln 32)

If someone could explain how the Studio builds the dialogs i am
confident i could fudge my way through fixing the afore-mentioned
annoyances.

Cheers,

--
Chris Tweedie

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