[Tilecache] dynamic config

[Attila Csipa]

On Wednesday 13 February 2008 14:29:47 Christopher Schmidt wrote:
> I don't mind having this, but as Eric pointed out, this won't reload 'on
> the fly'. If I were to implement dynamic layers, I would personally
> implement them at the 'handler' level, writing my own replacement
> handler that looked at the URL to figure out which layers to load before
> passing the constructed service off to modPythonHandler or the like.
> I know that users have had luck with this in the past.
> If you're still interested in this, let me know, and I'll look into
> putting it in.

Yes, I gave a thought to that too. We had a previous discussion of how smart 
tilecache should be, and if you remember, I'm the one who wants to keep it 
simple and avoid too much logic within tilecache itself :) In my case, 
editing and access is (IMHO) far more simple to implement by operating on 
simple text files and symlinking them (a bit like Apache2 handles 
virtualhosts) in proper _hierarchical_ directories than adding code logic to 
handlers which then filter and/or generate the necessary layers. Thus, I'd 
stick to my solution of changing the configuration without editing 
tilecache.cfg and go with simple filesystem operations instead (it's not like 
these take place on every tile request). I do realize that this might not be 
as interesting to windows users or people who want a sort of 'sed' 
functionality for the handler input to determine output layers (spaking of 
which, perhaps an input regex could be fun, or, better yet, mod_rewrite like 
functionality). The dynamic stuff on the handler level IS interesting to me, 
but for different purposes, probably too exotic for most people (QoS, 
on-demand layer generation, etc).