[mapserver-users] String manipulation before label display????

[Jeff McKenna]

Greg Fausak wrote:
> 
> I'm using 3.5 mapscript php...
> 
> I've downloaded the road dataset from nationalatlas.gov.
> It has the road names listed like:
> 
> 'Interstate Route 35, US Route 77'
> 'Interstate Route 30'
> 'Interstate Route 45'
> 
> I'd like to run a little manipulation on the
> strings before the fit and display are run on
> the map.  That is, something like:
> 
> NAME =~ s/^Interstate Route //;
> NAME =~ s/,.*//;
> 
> which would cause the about list to now be:
> '35'
> '30'
> '45'
> 
> These numbers will fit on the interstate symbol...
> Is there any way to do this?  Something similar to the
> EXPRESSION keyword.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> ---greg
> Greg Fausak
> August.Net Services, LLC
> lgfausak at august.net


Greg,

I'm not sure about the MapServer aspect of your question, but what I
would do is do some preproccessing of the data first (to extract the
highway number string).  For example, with ArcView I would:

- make a new field named 'hwynum'
- using the Field Calculator set hwynum = hwy.extract(2)  (hwy being the
field with the full string names of the highways)
- then set hwynum = hwynum.substitute(",", "")

This would make a new field containing just your highway numbers.

Jeff



-- 

Jeff McKenna
GIS Specialist
DM Solutions Group Inc.
http://www.dmsolutions.ca/