Map files for dummies?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Dave,

What are the extents of the Bexar county shapefile as report by ogrinfo 
and how do they compare to the extents of the mapfile. You mapfile 
extents should probably have negative longitudes. So the extents you are 
displaying are nowhere near the county in question.

-Steve W.

Dave Nuttall wrote:
> I have an instance of Mapserver 4.8.1 running on CentOS with Apache 
> 2.20, PHP 5.1.2 and Mapscript running as a DSO.
> 
>  
> 
> I can make/display maps where I use the canned tutorials.  But I’m 
> failing to create map displays when I substitute shapefiles that are of 
> local interest.
> 
>  
> 
> The shapefiles in question are apparently valid, since I can read them 
> without any problems using “ogrinfo –al shapefile.shp”.
> 
>  
> 
> I extract the decimal dimensions and create my own *.map file, but all I 
> ever get is the layer for pseudo-credits.
> 
>  
> 
> If someone could tweak my map file (which follows), it would be a 
> valuable learning experience for me.
> 
>  
> 
> TIA.
> 
> Dave Nuttall
> 
> San Antonio, TX
> 
>  
> 
> Here is my map file:
> 
>  
> 
> MAP
> 
>     NAME BEXAR2
> 
>     STATUS ON
> 
>     SIZE 400 300
> 
>     IMAGETYPE PNG
> 
>     IMAGECOLOR 240 240 240
> 
>     SHAPEPATH "/var/www/data/texas"
> 
>     # the extents were pulled from the shape file with ogrinfo
> 
>     EXTENT 29.114435 98.116613 29.760630 98.806552
> 
>     UNITS DD
> 
>  
> 
>             LAYER
> 
>                         NAME "Bexar County"
> 
>                         TYPE POLYGON
> 
>                         STATUS ON
> 
>                         DATA "tgr48029all"
> 
>     # don't know if this projection is valid!
> 
>                         PROJECTION                                       
> 
>                            "proj=latlong"
> 
>                            "ellps=GRS80"
> 
>                            "datum=NAD83"
> 
>                         END                
> 
>                         CLASS                        
> 
>                         NAME "Bexar County"
> 
>                         OUTLINECOLOR 90 90 90
> 
>                         COLOR 0 255 0
> 
>                         END
> 
> END
> 
> # End of map layer
> 
>            
> 
> # This credits layer always works/displays!        
> 
>             LAYER
> 
>                                      NAME "credits"
> 
>                                      STATUS DEFAULT
> 
>                                      TRANSFORM FALSE
> 
>                                      TYPE ANNOTATION
> 
>                                      FEATURE
> 
>                                     
>                                                 POINTS 10 290
> 
>                                      END
> 
>                                      TEXT 'Made with Mapserver. AIM to 
> see it.'
> 
>             END
> 
>             CLASS
> 
>                                     LABEL
> 
>                                     TYPE BITMAP
> 
>                                     POSITION CR
> 
>                                     COLOR 0 0 0
> 
>                                     END
> 
>                         END
> 
> END
> 
> # end of credits layer
> 
> END
> 
> # end of bexar2.map for Bexar County, Texas.
>