[MapServer-dev] RFC-140 - MapServer Homepage
Richard Greenwood
richard.greenwood at gmail.com
Tue Mar 11 09:35:15 PDT 2025
On Tue, Mar 11, 2025 at 8:47 AM Lime, Steve D (MNIT) via MapServer-dev <
mapserver-dev at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
> One idea might be to support a more restful URL, e.g.
> https://myhost.com/cgi-bin/mapserv/homepage (or /home or /index or ?)
> instead of using a parameter-based approach. Maybe that endpoint name could
> be configurable via the config file – and that could also enable the
> functionality.
>
Steve, correct me if I'm wrong, but that seems like it's getting into the
realm of the web server. Like how is the mapserv binary to know that it
should look for, and process, stuff after the "/"? What happens for example
with "cgi-bin/mapserv.fcgi/homepage"? Does Apache know that I want to run
the mapserv binary in fcgi mode and also know to pass the "homepage" part
to the binary as a parameter? I like the idea of a restful syntax but I
can't get my head around the implementation.
Rich
>
> *From:* MapServer-dev <mapserver-dev-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> *On Behalf
> Of *Daniel Morissette via MapServer-dev
> *Sent:* Monday, March 10, 2025 4:58 PM
> *To:* mapserver-dev at lists.osgeo.org
> *Subject:* Re: [MapServer-dev] RFC-140 - MapServer Homepage
>
>
>
> Hi everyone,
>
>
>
> Sorry for being late with my feedback. I like the RFC overall, but was
> wondering if we could find a better trigger than mode=config for this
> feature. My first reaction when I saw mode=config was that this mode could
> be used to deal with the actual config settings in the future if we ever
> want to go there so using mode=config today for this homepage feature could
> limit our future options. That being said, I couldn't find any good names
> other than mode=homepage to match the MS_HOMEPAGE_TEMPLATE_DIRECTORY
> variable that controls it.
>
>
>
> I can live with mode=config if we have no better option and am +1 with the
> RFC otherwise.
>
>
>
> Daniel
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 2025-03-09 11:57, Seth G via MapServer-dev wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
>
>
> I've added in the feedback from the comments above to RFC 140 [1], see
> diff of changes at [2].
>
> I'd like to now formally propose to adopt this RFC, starting with my +1.
>
>
>
> Seth
>
>
>
> [1] https://mapserver.org/development/rfc/ms-rfc-140.html
>
> [2] https://github.com/MapServer/MapServer-documentation/pull/1000/files
>
>
>
> --
>
> web:https://geographika.net & https://mapserverstudio.net
>
> mastodon: @geographika at mastodon.social
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 22, 2025, at 4:40 PM, Tom Kralidis wrote:
>
> Thanks Seth.
>
>
>
> RE: service-meta: I would still keep to the link conventions (proper media
> type for "type", we could add a custom "service-type=WMS" property), and
> include an href as well.
>
>
>
> ..Tom
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 22, 2025 at 10:27 AM Seth G <sethg at geographika.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
>
> Thanks Tom - that pygeoapi pull request is good timing!
>
>
>
> After reviewing and reading some of the associated documents, I'm planning
> to update the RFC with the notes below.
>
>
>
> pygeoapi has implemented a JSON service for their homepage at [1] (pull
> request at [2].
>
> This implements the api-catalog, a draft IETF (Internet Engineering Task
> Force) standard [3].
>
> The Link Set format is described at [4]. It is proposed this approach is
> used to generate JSON for a MapServer "homepage".
>
> The generated JSON format can be seen at
> https://demo.pygeoapi.io/api-catalog.json, with an extract below:
>
>
>
> {
>
> "linkset": [
>
> {
>
> "anchor": "https://demo.pygeoapi.io/master",
>
> "service-desc": [
>
> {
>
> "href": "https://demo.pygeoapi.io/master/openapi?f=json",
>
> "title": "pygeoapi - latest GitHub 'master' version (JSON)",
>
> "type": "application/vnd.oai.openapi+json"
>
> }
>
> ],
>
> "service-doc": [
>
> {
>
> "href": "https://demo.pygeoapi.io/master/openapi?f=html",
>
> "title": "pygeoapi - latest GitHub 'master' version (HTML)",
>
> "type": "text/html"
>
> }
>
> ]
>
> },
>
>
>
> The spec allows for an additional "service-meta" property "used to link to
> additional metadata about the API,
>
> and is primarily intended for machine consumption." I think this can be
> used to add any additional properties from Mapfiles
>
> we'd need to generate a MapServer homepage.
>
> "service-doc" isn't mandatory, so WxS service links can ignore this. An
> example of the proposed JSON and metadata is shown below:
>
>
>
> {
>
> "linkset": [
>
> {
>
> "anchor": "https://demo.mapserver.org/",
>
> "service-desc": [
>
> {
>
> "href": "
> https://demo.mapserver.org/cgi-bin/msautotest?SERVICE=WMS&VERSION=1.3.0&REQUEST=GetCapabilities
> ",
>
> "title": "World WMS service",
>
> "type": "text/xml"
>
> }
>
> ],
>
> "service-meta": {
>
> {
>
> "type": "wms",
>
> "title": "WMS demo server for MapServer, used in the msautotest
> suite",
>
> "keywords": ["layers", "list"],
>
> "mapfile": "msautotest.map",
>
> }
>
> }
>
> },
>
>
>
> Seth
>
>
>
> [1] https://demo.pygeoapi.io/
>
> [2] https://github.com/geopython/demo.pygeoapi.io/pull/60/files
>
> [3] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-httpapi-api-catalog/08/
>
> [4] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9264.html
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> web:https://geographika.net & https://mapserverstudio.net
>
> mastodon: @geographika at mastodon.social
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 19, 2025, at 5:10 PM, Tom Kralidis wrote:
>
> Seth: thanks for this RFC. IETF has api-catalog (draft, [1]) which I
> think would be a good candidate for this RFC. This is also an item for
> review in the OGC API - Records SWG [2].
>
>
>
> Overall it looks pretty close to the RFC proposal. We can consider using
> api-catalog as a baseline and we can extend the JSON accordingly as needed
> for anything specific to our needs.
>
>
>
> Cheers
>
>
>
> ..Tom
>
>
>
> [1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-httpapi-api-catalog
>
> [2] https://github.com/opengeospatial/ogcapi-records/issues/355
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Jan 18, 2025 at 5:39 PM Seth G via MapServer-dev <
> mapserver-dev at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
>
> Looking again at the landing page JSON at
> https://demo.mapserver.org/cgi-bin/mapserv/localdemo/ogcapi?f=json it is
> in the same format, so as you suggested could simply be expanded with links
> to WxS services, or even CGI generated responses. This would also more
> easily allow template reuse.
>
>
>
> Seth
>
>
>
> --
>
> web:https://geographika.net & https://mapserverstudio.net
>
> mastodon: @geographika at mastodon.social
>
>
>
> On Sat, Jan 18, 2025, at 11:33 PM, Seth G via MapServer-dev wrote:
>
> > Hi Even,
>
> >
>
> > Thanks for your valuable feedback.
>
> >
>
> > The homepage would be a "superset" of all available Mapfiles in a
>
> > MapServer deployment, as listed in the CONFIG file. Each individual
>
> > Mapfile would still have its own OGC API landing page, so the homepage
>
> > is best described as a directory of all landing pages.
>
> >
>
> > As most MapServer deployments will likely be serving out a combination
>
> > of WxS and new OGC API services for some time to come, it will allow
>
> > both types to be listed together (I'm unaware of a OGC API spec that
>
> > would cover this).
>
> >
>
> > In regard to the JSON used for links, I was modelling it as closely as
>
> > possible to OGC API conventions. Looking at the pygeoapi demo home
>
> > page, it provides a set of links in a common format, so I'll likely
>
> > switch to this format/approach:
>
> >
>
> > https://demo.pygeoapi.io/stable?f=json
>
> >
>
> > A few of the "rel" values are defined as below, and can be reused:
>
> >
>
> > alternate Provides an alternate representation (e.g., HTML version
> of a
>
> > resource).
>
> > service-desc Links to the machine-readable API description (e.g.,
>
> > OpenAPI JSON).
>
> > service-doc Links to the human-readable API documentation (e.g.,
>
> > OpenAPI HTML).
>
> > conformance Lists the standards and conformance classes supported by
>
> > the API.
>
> >
>
> > I'll update the RFC with the above,
>
> >
>
> > Seth
>
> >
>
> > --
>
> > web:https://geographika.net & https://mapserverstudio.net
>
> > mastodon: @geographika at mastodon.social
>
> >
>
> > On Sat, Jan 18, 2025, at 12:39 PM, Even Rouault wrote:
>
> >> Seth,
>
> >>
>
> >> Thanks for putting this together. I'm wondering how much your proposal
>
> >> relates/intersects with the concept of the landing page of OGC API
>
> >> services ? You mention some connection with it, but it is not
>
> >> immediately clear to me the exact nature of the connection. Perhaps it
>
> >> is just a matter of clarifying. I have put zero thoughts in it, but it
>
> >> would feel weird to invent a MapServer specific thing, so I'm naively
>
> >> wondering if we can't we just adopt the landing page formalism (for the
>
> >> JSON part), and potentially extend it by exposing old WxS services as
>
> >> well in the links as you suggest? I'm also wondering if there's some
>
> >> best practice used by other projects on how to expose for things like
>
> >>
>
> >> {
>
> >> "href":
>
> >> "
> https://demo.mapserver.org/cgi-bin/wms?SERVICE=WMS&VERSION=1.3.0&REQUEST=GetCapabilities
> ",
>
> >> "title": "GetCapabilities",
>
> >> "type": "WMS"
>
> >> },
>
> >>
>
> >> so they can be interoperably consumed.
>
> >>
>
> >> Even
>
> >>
>
> >> Le 18/01/2025 à 09:11, Seth G via MapServer-dev a écrit :
>
> >>> Hi devs,
>
> >>>
>
> >>> I've drafted an RFC with an approach of creating a MapServer homepage
> based on the MAPs referenced in a mapserver.conf file. This will allow
> MapServer installations to easily advertise available services, dynamically.
>
> >>>
>
> >>> Text available in pull request at
> https://github.com/MapServer/MapServer-documentation/pull/996
>
> >>>
>
> >>> Comments and thoughts appreciated,
>
> >>> Thanks,
>
> >>>
>
> >>> Seth
>
> >>>
>
> >>> --
>
> >>> web:https://geographika.net & https://mapserverstudio.net
>
> >>> mastodon: @geographika at mastodon.social
>
> >>> _______________________________________________
>
> >>> MapServer-dev mailing list
>
> >>> MapServer-dev at lists.osgeo.org
>
> >>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/mapserver-dev
>
> >>
>
> >> --
>
> >> http://www.spatialys.com
>
> >> My software is free, but my time generally not.
>
> >> Butcher of all kinds of standards, open or closed formats. At the end,
>
> >> this is just about bytes.
>
> > _______________________________________________
>
> > MapServer-dev mailing list
>
> > MapServer-dev at lists.osgeo.org
>
> > https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/mapserver-dev
>
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>
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>
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>
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>
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>
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>
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>
>
>
> --
>
> Daniel Morissette
>
> Mapgears Inc
>
> T: +1 418-696-5056 #201
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
--
Richard W. Greenwood
www.greenwoodmap.com
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