[mapserver-users] Developing Skins for Mapserver Apps

[Antti.Roppola at brs.gov.au]

Hi all,

I have been working on something like that. We have a couple of
Mapserver apps up, and already, trying to keep the content and
the supporting HTML is sync is a pain.

Currently, I have a PHP app that recurses through a .map file and
builds an interface based entirely on what it finds there. Here is
an example:

	for($n=0; $n < $map->{numlayers}; $n++) {			// Create gadgets while layers exist in $map
		$layer = $map->getlayer($n);
		$layer_name = $layer->{name};
		if($layer_select[$n]==1) {
			$checked="checked";
			$layer = $map->getlayer($n);
			$layer->set("status", 1);
		} else {
			$checked="";
		}
		echo("<input type=checkbox name=layer_select[$n] value=1 $checked>$layer_name<br>\n");
	}

This is a *bit* silly (to build the form on every transaction even if
the map file hasn't changed), but it would be easy to build in hooks
to cache all this work so it's only done when the map file changes.

Hopefully I'll put the whole thing up for FTP once it's completed, I am
currently doing Zoom & Pan, & was able to re-use Daniel's GMap code to
do the query function. Reusable code is good...  :o)

Cheers,

Antti

-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen Woodbridge [mailto:woodbri at swoodbridge.com]

if we could make navigation interfaces like "skins." It would be really
cool of you could drop a "skin" into a directory with a map file and it
would just work! You might need to run a utility to init the "skin", but

To accomplish this, you would need to be able to discover what is in a
map file (doable today) and maybe via the metadata get info on what
should be exposed via the skin. And if you wanted to use an external