quakes.map in MapScript example?

[John Frank]

Hi -- I'm new to mapscript and am trying to run the mapquakes.pl example
locally.  Does this line _create_ quakes.map or open an existing .map
file?

die $mapscript::ms_error->{message} unless $map = new
mapObj("mypath/quakes.map");

If it opens an existing one, is that file available somewhere?  I see that
as of last December, new mapObj does not create an "empty" mapObj.  Is
this still true?

Thanks!  John




_____________________________________________________________________
John R. Frank      Ecology!     Solar!     N9WLY     www.mit.edu/~jrf

jrf at mit.edu			    cell: (617) 283-3999
jrf at joyce.eng.yale.edu               fax: (253) 390-4974
jrf at 4dobe.com





To: <mapserver-users at lists.gis.umn.edu> 
     Subject: MapScript example... 
     From: "Stephen Lime" <steve.lime at dnr.state.mn.us> 
     Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 15:08:58 -0600 
     Content-Disposition: inline 



Got a simple MapScript example running at
http://arachnid.dnr.state.mn.us/ms_test. It's a perl script that uses
remote data from the USGS (gathered using the perl Net::Finger module) to
plot the last 21 semi-major earth quakes around the world. I swiped the
world DEM from Doug Nebert's prototype, pretty image. Everything is
handled in perl using a few MapScript calls to manipulate map file
settings, draw the basemap, map the quake locations and to add a
timestamp. It may be slow depending on how busy the USGS servers are cause
each pan or zoom executes a finger request. In a production mode you'd
probably nab the data every hour or so and work from the copy, still no
need to create a shapefile. I'll glady share any details of this script.

Yes, documentation is in the works. I hope to have at least some up tonite
at the main MapServer site.

Steve

Stephen Lime
Internet Applications Analyst

Minnesota DNR
500 Lafayette Road
St. Paul, MN 55155
651-297-2937