[Mapserver-dev] Feature Questions..

[woodbri at swoodbridge.com]

Alan,

Most people do this with a little PHP/Mapscript. There have been a 
few examples posted where people have point in a database and do a 
query based on map extents to get the point then place them on the 
map with labels. It is easy to also then add the list of points with 
appropriate field info onto the page. Mapscript also allow you to get 
or calc the location of the points in image coordinates so 
calculating a bbox about the point is simple so you can create an 
image map also.

If your concern is performance of loading php+mapscript over loading 
mapserver the former probably has a little additional overhead, but 
it is much easier to maintain a few mapscript apps, than to merge 
custom changes into mapserver unless you are thinking about extending 
the core mapserver CVS.

Also, add the markers is probably much less overhead than doing the 
additional query.

Just my 2 cents,
  -Steve W.

On 25 Sep 2003 at 11:52, Alan Steremberg wrote:

> 
> Hi,
> 
> Here is one of the things I want to do:
> 
> 1) Display a zoomed in map of weather stations (from a database? from
> a shapefile?) 2) If there are less than 20 on the map, number them
> 1-20 as the symbol 3) include a table on the same page that lists the
> 20 stations, with fields from the DBF/Database 4) be able to get the
> xy image coordinates to make a client side click map
> 
> 
> This would be similar to the hotel listings on Expedia when you click
> 'show hotels on a map'.
> 
> I have dug through the mapserver code and read some of the
> documentation.. I got somewhat close to this by changing the code so
> it will do a query by rectangle (using the rectangle of the screen)
> and then running a template query in addition to creating the map, ie:
> combining the query and map display stuff into one web page.
> 
> It seems like what I really want is a concept where I can turn on a
> 'template query' for each layer in the .map file, and have the code
> store away the x,y location, and table fields when it goes to render
> the shape. Otherwise, connectors that don't support random access to
> each row (like the mapmygis.c connector) aren't supported.. Plus this
> would mean that it wouldn't need to load the data twice. (Potentially
> you would need to specify in the map file which fields to load, so
> that it could store them all away).
> 
> Changing the symbols to 1-20 markers, seems like a whole different set
> of modifications, or maybe it is already possible.
> 
> I have thought about doing some of this in mapscript, but really would
> rather write everything in C...
> 
> I also have a prototype version that supports the 'clearsilver.org'
> templating system, instead of the built in one.  clearsilver is pretty
> nice, we run our entire website using it..
> 
> Any ideas on how to implement these things:
>    1 - without making code modifications?
>    2 - in a manner that will make sense and be accepted as code
>    changes 3 - am i missing something completely? :-)
> 
> Alan
> 
> 
> ----------------------------
>  Alan Steremberg
>  415-543-5021 x 103
>  http://www.wunderground.com
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