[Mapserver-dev] include directive for mapfiles

[Steve Lime]

Wow, lot's of good conversation on the topic. It's been a "todo" for a
long time, but I've been wary for technical and performance reasons. 
Redirecting parsing from one file to another and then back doesn't work
well using flex. So an INCLUDE directive doesn't fit well with the
current setup. Anything's possible but I think it would get very messy
very quickly. 

A pre-processor seems to me to be the best solution. Using the C
preprocessor sounds like it works but is not a general solution for
everyone. What about creating a set of functions and a utility for
inclusion in the MapServer distribution? We could also probably invoke
it in a runtime fashion if the pre-processor could produce the final
mapfile in memory as a string. (there's already a bug filed for parsing
mapfile snippets from strings)

The CGI already supports some runtime substitution for select directives
like expressions and connection. That could be expanded as part of
pre-processing perhaps.

In short, I like the idea but think a pre-processor, our own
pre-processor may be a better way to achieve it. My 2 cents anyway.

Steve

Stephen Lime
Data & Applications Manager

Minnesota DNR
500 Lafayette Road
St. Paul, MN 55155
651-297-2937
>>> "Kralidis,Tom [Burlington]" <Tom.Kralidis at ec.gc.ca> 10/29/04 8:44 AM
>>>

Hi,

During a spirited conversation with Frank and Dave last night, I was
encouraged to send a post w.r.t. this subject, so here goes:

For those of us running MapServer with multiple datasets, definitions,
etc., it would be nice to be able to 'compartmentalize' mapfile chunks
which other mapfiles can refer to.

I'd be interested in hearing others' thoughts of defining a new mapfile
object called 'INCLUDE', which does just that, include contents of
another mapfile, i.e.:

INCLUDE 'roads.map'

Comments?

Thanks

..Tom

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