[Mapserver-users] zoom to result (was MapServer)

[Richard Greenwood]

On 2 Feb 2004 at 16:21, Charles Young wrote:

>>Hi, 
>>
>>Do you possibly know of a way to run a dynamic search in MapServer and
>>then zoom to the result?
>>
>>
>>Best Regards
>>
>>Charles Young
>>Director: Business Development
>>
>>Spatial Dimension
>>Cape Town
>>South Africa
>>Tel:  +2721 531 3132
>>Fax: +2721 531 4209
>>Cell:  083 679 1789
>>Web: www.spatialdimension.co.za
>>
>>ESRI Foundation Business Partner of the Year 2003
>>    
>>
Take a look at mode=itemquery. Following is example HTML code to put a 
"Show Map" button into a listing page. This is a bare-bones HTML 
example, it can also be done with Javascript, and there are a lot of 
other possible options and variations. Cut and paste the following into 
a listing page.



<FORM action="/mapserver/mapserv.exe" method="get">
  <input type="hidden" name="map" value="rejh/rejh.map">
  <input type="hidden" name="mode" value="itemquery">
  <input type="hidden" name="qlayer" value="join_region_spatial">
  <input type="hidden" name="qitem"  value="pidn">
  <input type="hidden" name="mapext"  value="shapes">
  <input type="hidden" name="savequery" value="true">
  <input type="hidden" name="qstring" value="12345">
  <input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Show Map">
</FORM>


Explanation by line:
  1. <Form .... > Open an HTML form element so we can submit to the server.
       action="/mapserver/mapserv.exe"  The URI to the CGI. This assumes 
that
         mapserver is on the same server as the calling page. If not, a 
fully
         qualified URI can be specified.
  2. <input type="hidden" name="map" value="rejh/rejh.map">
       The "map" file is mapserver's configuration file, it defines layers,
       sets styles and colors, specifies paths, etc. It will always be same.
  3. <input type="hidden" name="mode" value="itemquery">
       Mode tells mapserver what we want it to do, in this case - draw a
       map zoomed in on the specified property.
  4. <input type="hidden" name="qlayer"   value="join_region_spatial">
       The qlayer (query layer) will highlight the selected property, we
       can set the style, color,labeling, etc. with this layer.
  5. <input type="hidden" name="qitem" value="pidn">
       This is the column name in the mapserver database to query against.
  6. <input type="hidden" name="mapext"  value="shapes">
       This requires a pretty lengthy eplanation. Just go with it for now.
  7. <input type="hidden" name="savequery" value="true">
       Here we are telling mapserver to keep the selected property 
highlighted.
       This is optional.
  8. <input type="hidden" name="qstring" value="12345">
       The value being searched for.
  9. <input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Show Map">
       Submit the form.

-- 
Richard Greenwood
www.greenwoodmap.com