[mapserver-users] MapServer output

[Stephen Woodbridge]

On 11/19/2010 12:58 PM, P Kishor wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 11:55 AM, Stephen Woodbridge
> <woodbri at swoodbridge.com>  wrote:
>> On 11/19/2010 12:38 PM, P Kishor wrote:
>>>
>>> I have been using MapServer for sometime now, but doing really simple
>>> things with it... read in mostly Pg, Shapefile and raster data, and
>>> output mostly images via regular CGI or WMS.
>>>
>>> One thing that GeoServer seems to do very well is provide easy output
>>> to a variety of formats -- GeoJSON, images, features, KML, a whole lot
>>> more.
>>>
>>> What are MapServer's capabilities in this regard? Ideally, my
>>> application would return the requested format based on the URI. So,
>>> given http://server/mapserv/wms/ would return WMS. If I replace "wms"
>>> with "kml" I would get back KML, or replace it with "geojson" and get
>>> back GeoJSON, etc.
>>>
>>> Is there a tutorial or documentation on this that someone can point me to?
>>>
>>
>> FYI, there are a lot of changes coming in the rendering code as part of 6.0.
>> I don't have the RFC's handy, but you might want to start looking at that.
>>
>
> Thanks. I saw some of the RFCs (58 deals with KML). The ones I saw, as
> you note above, reference MS 6.0. Other than OGC stuff (WMS, WFS),
> does this imply that as is, MapServer can't "render" data into
> GeoJSON, KML, etc.?

In 6.0 all the renders are now in a plugin format which will make it 
easier to add new renderers and make it easier to maintain existing 
renderers to keep them more consistent. I think it also improves the 
query output to some extent because that is based on how renders work.

In one sense "rendering" is what mapserver does. in some cases it 
renders as an image, in other cases it renders as text or other formats.

I think the other responses to this thread pretty much covered the 
details of what you can do now and the additional query responses based 
on 6.0 code.

-Steve W

>> Also, mapserver support OGC WFS and I think there may be options to
>> configure the output as XML or JSON, but I'm not sure. Anyway this would be
>> another place to look. Also I would google for:
>>
>> mapserver<format>  ouput
>>
>> or something like that and see what turns up.
>>
>> Other might have more direct  help.
>>
>> -Steve W
>