consolidation of .map file contents

[Dylan Beaudette]

Ed,

Thanks for the excellent suggestions. I will keep this method in mind
when developing our new mapserver applications.

After more exchanges with the good people on this list, and  bit of
monkeying with some of the DHTML code on the UMN site, it looks like i
will be able to use a single map file for the many counties' worth of
data that we have.

Cheers!

On Apr 20, 2005, at 4:44 PM, Ed McNierney wrote:

> Dylan -
>
> Steve's suggestions are quite reasonable.  As he mentioned, I use the C
> preprocessor to manage the generation of .map files.  The use of
> #define
> and #include directives is especially helpful when you have a large
> number of attributes you want to keep consistent across layers.  For
> example, I might have a "street map" that's made up of several
> different
> LAYERs (interstate highways, state highways, local roads, etc., etc.).
> Each of them might have labels using fonts of a particular style and
> size.  If I use a statement like:
>
>         #define STREETFACE "Arial"
>         #define STREETSIZE 10
>
> Then it's easy for me to change the typeface or size of all those
> layers
> at once, keeping them consistent.
>
>         - Ed
>
> Ed McNierney
> President and Chief Mapmaker
> TopoZone.com / Maps a la carte, Inc.
> 73 Princeton Street, Suite 305
> North Chelmsford, MA  01863
> Phone: +1 (978) 251-4242
> Fax: +1 (978) 251-1396
> ed at topozone.com
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: UMN MapServer Users List [mailto:MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU]
> On
> Behalf Of Stephen Woodbridge
> Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 5:39 PM
> To: MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU
> Subject: Re: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] consolidation of .map file contents
>
> Dylan Beaudette wrote:
>> Steve,
>>
>> Thanks for the input. To clarify a bit, we have county -by-county
>> information, with associated data in a MySQL database that is accessed
>
>> via Mapserver-style query templates and PHP.
>>
>> There are 2 current reasons why each county has its own .map file (and
>
>> they might not even be very good ones, i hope!):
>>
>> 1. each map obviously has a different:
>> -context map image
>> -geographic extent
>> -shape file for the main content, rendered according to the county
>
> One question is why not make all your counties as a seamless map using
> a
> tileindex. I have 3300+ counties of Tiger data and each county is a
> directory of about 10 separate shapefiles for each of the layers. You
> can do the same for images depending on projection issues.
>
> http://imaptools.com/tiger/
> http://imaptools.com/tiger2/ (Googlesque styling)
>
> You may have reasons why you don't what to tile the counties, and you
> could change the shapefile on the fly using mapscript.
>
> As for geographic extents, you already have a way to select the county,
> it would be pretty straight forward to load the extents of each county
> into a table and then look up the extents after the county has been
> selected and then position the map based on those extents.
>
> Create a table like:
>
> County_ID | State | County_Name | Shapefile | minx | miny | maxx | maxy
>
>> 2. the query results need to contain a unique county ID
>>
>> a lot of these problems could be resolved if i could figure out how to
>
>> pass mapserver configuration parameters in the URL: i.e. the county
>> ID, the geographic extent, and the name of the shape file containing
>> the main content for that county.
>
> You can edit most stuff in the mapfile via the URL. If you had the
> table
> of extents you could add the county ID, all my Tiger county polygons
> have a unique FIPS id like 25017 for Middlesex County, MA. The 25 is
> actually the FIPS code for MA. Do you have anything like that in the
> shapefile attributes?
>
>> does this seem reasonable?
>
> It all sounds very reasonable, and if you are using mapscript then it
> should be all the more easy to do these things. In mapscript if you
> didn't want your counties tiled, then you could change the shapefile in
> mapscript based on the county you selected.
>
> There should be example around for most of the pieces mentioned above.
> Ask the list for any specific issues and I'm sure you'll get the help
> you need.
>
> -Steve W.
>
>> thanks!
>>
>> --
>> Dylan Beaudette
>> Soils and Biogeochemistry Graduate Group University of California at
>> Davis
>> 530.754.7341
>>
>> On Wednesday 20 April 2005 11:47 am, Stephen Woodbridge wrote:
>>
>>> All of your ideas are valid and can work depending on what you are
>>> try
>
>>> to accomplish. I know Ed at Topozone.com is using template mapfile
>>> fragments and using the cpp and Makefiles to generate a large number
>>> of mapfiles based on change the DEFINES. That way if you need to make
>>> a change to a section that is in all your mapfiles you just change
>>> one
>
>>> file and type make.
>>>
>>> But before you solve the technology, you might want to describe why
>>> you need  200 mapfiles and what type of things are changing from one
>>> to the other. There might be much better solutions.
>>>
>>> -Steve W.
>>>
>>> Dylan Beaudette wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi everyone,
>>>>
>>>> We have been using Mapserver for about a year now with a great deal
>>>> of success on small projects (i.e. single map file, single html
>>>> template, single query template).
>>>>
>>>> Now that we are considering a more complicated project with nearly
>>>> 200 .map files and their associated html templates and query
>>>> templates - quite a bit to manage should any cosmetic changes need
>>>> to
>
>>>> be made in the map files.
>>>>
>>>> Is there any way to "include" bits of a central map file to
>>>> consolidate the configuration of such a large project, or would it
>>>> be
>
>>>> better to use a single .map file, customizing it through the URL
> passed to it...
>>>>
>>>> ...or is phpmapscript a viable option?
>>>>
>>>> thanks in advancce for any ideas!
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Dylan Beaudette
>>>> Soils and Biogeochemistry Graduate Group University of California at
>>>> Davis
>>>> 530.754.7341
>>
>>
>
>
--
Dylan Beaudette
Soils and Biogeochemistry Graduate Group
University of California at Davis
530.754.7341