[mapserver-users] HTML Templates

Fri Jun 25 05:38:32 PDT 2010

Hi Andrew: In general the only things that need to be in your document root are graphics, scripts and pure HTML that will be 
directly accessible via a users browser. Assets like mapfiles, data, symbols and templates should be elsewhere. Those files will
need to be accessible (readable) by the user the web server is running under but should not be owned by that user.

The temp space for the images MapServer creates is also in document root but I consider that part of the overall setup and 
not a project component. That directory needs to be owned and writable by the user the web server runs as.

I often setup a project like so:

/project
  /data
  /mapfiles
  /templates
  /htdocs
    /javascript
    /images
    /html

and then symlink the htdocs directory into document root. Could just copy it too.

Your document root might look like:

/htdocs/
  /tmp (this is the MapServer temporary directory, owned by the user your httpd is running as)
  /project (this is a symlink to the main project's /htdocs directory)

As for your example files. 

1) In Hello.html, remove the hidden variable 'map-web-imagepath', it just confuses things.

2) In Hello.map, you're missing a closing END (which is why you see the error message you do). I believe if you add it you'll get 
the colored image you're expecting. Typically I indent all objects in mapfile to make it easier to debug:

MAP
  ... map level attributes ...

  WEB
    ... web level attributes ...
  END

  LAYER
    ... layer level attributes ...
  END
END

As for the book. It's just a bit dated and can't adequately cover all platforms (and MacOS isn't one of them). At a minimum you'll
need to use sudo most likely to run administrative commands.

Hope this helps...

Steve

________________________________________
From: mapserver-users-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mapserver-users-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Lewin [alewin at spatialconserve.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2010 1:44 PM
To: mapserver-users at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: [mapserver-users] HTML Templates

Hi Listers,

I am trying to learn MapServe as a beginner and I am having lots of trouble with the fundamentals of setting up the program.  I am running Mac OSX Snow Leopard with Apache.

According to my httpd-conf file, my document root is /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/ ; however, when I use the tutorial data the files need to be in my root directory i.e. /ws4w/etc... I thought that all the data had to be in the document root.  Can someone explain this to me please?

Another problem I am having...I bought the book "Beginning Mapserver: Open Source GIS Development".  The first simple example is a "Hello World" example.  The program starts off with a "Click Me" botton and a broken image.  When you click on the button, it is supposed to show the "Hello World" text.  When I click, I get an error like this: "msLoadMap(): Premature End-of-File."  Below are the two files that I used for the program"

Hello.html
<html>
<head><title>MapServer Hello World</title></head>
<body>
        <form method=POST action="/cgi-bin/mapserv">
                <input type="submit" value="Click Me">
                <input type="hidden" name="map" value="/home1/mapdata/Hello.map">
                <input type="hidden" name="map-web-imagepath"
                        value="/usr/local/apache2/htdocs/">
        <form>
        <IMG SRC="[img]" width=400 height=300 border=0>
</body>
</html>

Hello.map
# This is our "Hello World" maple
NAME "Hello_World"
SIZE 400 300
IMAGECOLOR 249 245 186
IMAGETYPE png
EXTENT -1.00 -1.00 1.00 1.00
WEB
        TEMPLATE "http://192.168.2.12/~andrewlewin/hello.html"
        IMAGEPATH "/usr/local/apache2/htdocs/"
        IMAGEURL "/tmp/"
END

The book suggests that I should Configure MapServer and Apache like this:
shapes:
mkdir /home/mapdata
chown nobody:nobody /home/mapdata
chmod u+rx /home/mapdata

images:
mkdir /var/www/htdocs/tmp
chown nobody:nobody /var/www/htdocs/tmp
chmod u+rx /var/www/htdocs/tmp

The problem is that when I try to run these commands, I get a "Permission denied" error.  How can I get permission to do this.  I remember when I was installing the various components from binaries that there was a command to ask me for my password before I did anything to the directory, but I forgot.  Can anyone tell me?

Sorry for posting all this at once.  I believe once I figure out these problems I will be able to move on.

Thanks,

Andrew

Andrew Lewin, M.Sc., Adv. Dipl. GIS
President
Spatial-Conserve Inc.
www.spatialconserve.com
Email: alewin at spatialconserve.com
Tel: (905) 639-4646
Mobile: (905) 630-8441
Skype: andrew.lewin99
Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/arlewin

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