[Mapserver-users] Using MapServer as a general graphing engine

[Armin Burger]

Tyler,

I also found it sometimes desirable to have Mapserver create thematical
maps with pie charts or bar charts, etc. I don't know how much work it
might be to implement this. Maybe DM Solutions OWTChart could be somehow
included?

Another, probably a bit easier implementation, could be using MapScript
combined with graphic modules/extensions for Perl or PHP, mainly based on
the GD library. But as far as I know there is no possibility to include
externally produced images and merge them on top of the map image. A
question to the developers: would it be possible to have a Mapscript
method that creates an imageObj from a file?

This way one could create all the charts based on shapefile or database
data with external graphic functions and merge these images with the map
image using the existing 'pasteImage' method. For not too many charts the
speed should be acceptable. For placing a chart exactly over a polygon a
method to calculate the shape centroid would be helpful.

Could this approach make sense?

Armin



> I know that a ton of web-based options exist for graphing and charting.
> But very few seem to really understand spatial data and many have a
> narrower scope of data sources than MapServer has.

> Am I the only one interested in doing this or are you interested in
doing
> this as well.  I see a few queries on related topics in the archives,
but
> very few responses.  So I am writing now to gather a feel for the level
of
> interest that others on the list may have to do all sorts of graphing
and
> charting stuff all within MapServer's capabilities.

> Tyler

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