Query template file question

[Jim T. Bowen (GAIA Consultants Inc.)]

Stephen Lime wrote:
> 
> Ok. The comments in the .ini file say that the value for TEMPLATE_VALUE should be a regular
> expression. The examples you show are not regular
> expresions, hence there problems. O'Reilly has an
> excellent regex reference book in case anyone in
> is interested. You have the right idea (or'ing), but the syntax is all wrong.

Thanks...too much code in my head and not enough time in the day!  I
came accross this site...may be a good intro. link for those 'still
climbing':   http://www.engr.usask.ca/~macphed/UNIX/regexp.html

> 
> Corrent me if I'm wrong , but CGI processes return
> content directly to the browser. I don't believe
> you can have PHP process a page generated by the
> MapServer. I know this used to be the case but
> haven't researched it in a while.

To the best of my knowledge, you are right re. the flow of results from
a CGI process.  This is likely one of the insurmountable issues I face,
even if I overcome the 'malformed template' issue.  It may be that
http-equiv or URL forwarding is the easiest/quickest way to address the
issue at this time.  

> 
> In general, I've chained things together using URL
> forwarding. MapServer forwards its stuff to another URL, bypassing the browser. That's what Ken was suggesting. Other than the double quotes
> issue it sounds as if that worked for you.

Not really.  When querying, MapServer still reports a 'malformed
template' when I pass the argument-based URL string to a PHP3 file.

> 
> Another way to do it is to use JavaScript. You can
> create a page that is essentially empty except for
> some javascript. That code can be initialized using standard mapserver substitutions and then
> can either build the page itself or replace the page with some URL. Example 5 in the short 
>tutorial I mention on the list in late Sept does exactly this. Can be very powerful.
> 
> If anyone knows of a way to filter a page from CGI
> before it is sent to the client, speak up. I'd love to be able to even just use simple SSI in a
> template file.

Not sure...would be challenging based on our dialog re. flow between
browser and CGI.  I too would be interested if anyone knows of a means
to accomplish this.

> 
> Of course, with mapscript much of this becomes a
> thing of the past as you can do all of your mapping and PHP-like stuff (eg. database) in one
> script.
> 

I look forward to mapscript!  :)

> Steve


Cheers,
Jim
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