[mapguide-internals] Viewer HTTP API

[Trevor Wekel]

Hi everyone,

At the January PSC meeting, we discussed viewer strategy and the future direction of the HTTP API.  From the meeting, the following general directions were discussed:

* Include GeoREST in MapGuide
* Move to a pure HTML/Javascript client framework (drop PHP/.Net/Java code from both viewers and implement in mapagent)
* Make the HTTP API more REST compliant

To facilitate further discussion, I documented the existing HTTP APIs for the Rendering Service http://trac.osgeo.org/mapguide/wiki/HttpApi/RenderingService.  

I also took a quick look at the existing PHP code for the Fusion and Ajax viewers.  Fusion has approximately 8000 lines of PHP code and the Ajax viewer has approximately 4000 lines of code.  There is likely some duplication of functionality between the viewers but this is still a lot of code to port to the mapagent.

In addition, we should probably look at some form of pluggable architecture for the mapagent to make it easier to glue in new functionality.  Combining the existing mapagent functionality with GeoREST into a "super agent" might be a good place to start.

Where do we go from here?

Regards, 
Trevor