Shapefile field problem

[Abe Gillespie]

I do appreciate the help, but I'm not looking for an "external to
MapServer" way of getting access to my DBF field values.  I just use my
PHP script to *reveal* problematic shapefile fields.  When there is a
problem it's unusable to MapServer!  I.e.: I can't use the field for
labelling.

-Abe

On Dec 7, 2004, at 11:27 AM, Ryan, Adam wrote:

> Abe,
>
> Here's a routine I use to get the header information (field info) from
> a dbf
> file.
>
> //      ==========      iDbf_fields     ==============
> //      $f is a dbf file path, returns an array of field arrays
> function iDbf_fields($f){
>         $h = fopen($f,"rb");
>         $a =
> unpack("cversion/cyy/cmm/cdd/inumrecs/sheadsize/
> srecsize",fread($h,12));
>         fread($h,20);   //skip some reserved space
>         for($i=0;$i<($a["headsize"]-33)/32;$i++){
>                 $fa = array();
>                 $fname = trim(fread($h,11));
>                 $fa["type"] = fread($h,1);
>                 fread($h,4);
>                 $fa = array_merge($fa,unpack("Clen/Cpre",fread($h,2)));
>                 fread($h,14);
>                 $flds[$fname] = $fa;
>         }
>         fclose($h);
>         return $flds;
> }
>
> When I generate a result table I'll go through the array like this:
> ($so is
> the shape Object)
>
>                         foreach($flds as $fname => $fA){
>                                 $val = $so->values[$fname];
>                                 if ($val==null)$val="&nbsp";
>                                 $val = str_replace("  ","
>  ",$val);
>                                 if ($fA["type"]=="D"){$val =
> substr($val,4,2)."-".substr($val,6,2)."-".substr($val,0,4);}
>                                 echo "<td>$val</td>";}
>                 }
>
>
> Cheers to all,
>
> Adam
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Abe Gillespie [mailto:agillesp at VT.EDU]
>> Sent: Monday, December 06, 2004 5:14 PM
>> To: MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU
>> Subject: Re: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] Shapefile field problem
>>
>>
>> It's a regular shapefile.  I think I've mostly narrowed it
>> down.  It seems to me (though I may be completely off) that
>> MapServer loads the first record of the DBF in order to get
>> the field definitions.  If the first record has a string
>> field and the value is zero length it won't give me the field
>> (though the field count is always correct).  In addition, it
>> won't give me any fields after that either.  If, however, I
>> make sure that field has some value (a dash, an "x",
>> whatever) then the field definition will come in correctly.
>> I still haven't narrowed down a problematic number field
>> though.  Mind you, this is all done in MapServer PHP v. 4.2.0.
>>
>> -Abe
>>
>> On Dec 6, 2004, at 6:15 PM, Daniel Morissette wrote:
>>
>>> Abe Gillespie wrote:
>>>> A good amount of fields aren't showing up in MapServer for
>> me.  I use
>>>> the following PHP script to dump out all layers and their
>> fields for
>>>> debugging.  Does MapServer have problems with certain data
>> types or
>>>> certain values in a row?
>>>>
>>>
>>> Are you using a tiled shapefile layer or is this a regular
>> shapefile
>>> layer?
>>>
>>> --
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>  Daniel Morissette               dmorissette at dmsolutions.ca
>>>  DM Solutions Group              http://www.dmsolutions.ca/
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>
>