Can mapfiles be generated dynamically?

[Tamas Szekeres]

2008/1/19, Tom Kazimiers <2voodoo at gmx.de>:
> Hi,
>
> I am relatively new to mapserver and am currently playing around to find
> out what is possible and what is not.
> Currently I develop an application which should be run on a mobile
> device like a PDA. One aim is that there is something like a
> "MapServer-Layer" which gives the opportunity to
> 1. get information which shapefiles and rasterdata is available on the
> server
> 2. one should be able to choose one or more layers out of 1. which then
> should be displayed according to position, zoom level, etc.
>
> So in my opinion this implies that the mapfiles which hold information
> about what layers can be displayed, in which order and so on could be
> generated dynamically (which must also be possible if I want to change
> the order). Is there already a way in mapserver (or an application) to
> accomplish this?
>
> If not the way to got would possibly be writing an application which
> does the generation, right?

You can easily set up a map object and save the state of this object
as a mapfile using the mapscript API in various languages right now.
However I don't think mapfile is the most appropriate format to
exchange metadata between a server and the client application. Why
don't you use something more conventional like utilizing the WMS
GetCapabilities and GetMap services that mapserver can provide?

> Maybe I have misunderstood something, but mapfiles are not available for
> all the applications or the whole mapserver, but are available to the
> belongig application? Therefore it is unlikely to find something like
> this already in mapserver, but maybe in an available application.
>

Mapsever + mapscript fully support reading or writing mapfiles and
provide API to do such things for various applications and platforms,
but mobile devices and PDAs are not supported at the moment.

Best regards,

Tamas