[Mapserver-users] Novice Questions

[patrickrouse at earthlink.net]

Just got mapserver up and runnning this week and I love it.  It has been a vast improvement over ArcIMS.  Just a couple of novice questions regarding cgi commands.  I've built a little popup map to be launched from another browser application.  It currently accepts a min and max lat/lon pairs to define the map.  I would like to set it up to accept only one set of lat/lons which would define the center point of the map.  I would also submit a zoom value tell mapserver how far the extents will extend from the center point.  I figured I could do this using the MAPXY and ZOOM directives outlined in the CGI ref.  I have been unsuccesful so far.  I noticed the ref said that MAPXY must be used in conjuction with QUERY.  Is it not possible to just do this without using query?


My other problem has been in devloping a query tool.  I want to zoom to a specific location based on a text box input on the browser.  I have been attempting to use the QUERYITEM option.  When I do this I usually get a message returned sayng that a filter has not been found.  I checked out the queryitem demo page and I noticed that map files used on the demo page have no filters listed.  So I was wondering why I would need to add a filter.

Thanks and any sample code urls for the above questions will be appreciated:

patrick m. rouse
gis analyst
the weather channel
prouse at weather.com
patrickrouse at earthlink.net