[postgis-users] Mapserver extent question

[David Niergarth]

Hello,

I have an extent from mapserver (e.g., "-121.682485 38.408966 
-121.231440 38.763359") that I want to feed back into a PostGIS query.

How do I express this extent in my query?

I want to write a query something like

select recid from tbl_points
where the_geom && <what goes here?> ;


A related question... What's a BOX (see following query):

select extent(the_geom) from tbl_points ;
                                    extent 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  BOX(-124.278755187988 32.5427703857422,-73.5306396484375 46.1519355773926)
(1 row)

It doesn't appear to be a WKT format. Is there a way to use BOX like you 
would with other WKT formats?

Thanks for any suggestions.

--David