RFC 31: Loading MapServer Objects from Strings

[Tamas Szekeres]

Steve,

Here are my comments/questions inline:

   1.Each function would need to remove restrictions for duplicate
properties. That is setting a parameter twice should not generate an
error as is does now.

Does this change alter the current behaviour when loading the
configuration from the mapfile. IMO it isn't a big problem if a
parameter is overwritten by another if it have been specified twice.

   2.Properties with allocated memory (e.g. char *) should be free'd
if they already have values and are being updated.

Did you mean simply calling freeObject (freeLayer, freeClass etc.) to
accomplish this task? However some of these functions can only be
called when the refcount reaches zero as of the changes related to
RFC24.

   3.the object main keyword (e.g. LAYER or CLASS) should be allowed
as a token within that object loader. That would allow entire
definitions to be passed without throwing an error. That token would
simply be skipped in the switch statement.

If I understand correcly when loading a layer the entire map
definition can be passed. Each of the LAYERs will be parsed but the
last LAYER definition wins. Am I right?


Further comments:

It would be considerable to implement the inverse operations as
writing the objects to strings. This addition along with the proposed
one, would provide persistency support for the mapscript objects and
would be a feasible way to preserve the state among various
requests/sessions.


Best regards,

Tamas



2007/6/15, Steve Lime <Steve.Lime at dnr.state.mn.us>:
> Hi folks: In the mad rush to get these defined, I have another one. Please see:
>
>   http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/development/rfc/ms-rfc-31
>
> Steve
>