MapServer OpenLayers Viewer¶

MapServer provides a simple, built-in method for testing a mapfile using OpenLayers. This feature is for testing/development purposes only, and not for production or deploying full-featured sites. You can preview, test, and navigate a mapfile by accessing a special url which will return a built-in OpenLayers template.

Note

This feature was discussed in rfc 63 and in the ticket http://trac.osgeo.org/mapserver/ticket/3549

Using the OpenLayers viewer¶

Opening the OpenLayers viewer in your browser¶

Assuming you are running mapserver on your local machine, and you have the Itasca demo setup, a basic url would be (split into two lines for readability):

http://localhost/cgi-bin/mapserv?mode=browse&template=openlayers
     &layer=lakespy2&layer=dlgstln2&map=/var/www/workshop/itasca.map

Here is a quick breakdown of that url:

Basic Parameters for activating the OpenLayers browser:
```
template=openlayers
mode=browse
```

Basic Map / Layer Parameters:

map=/var/www/workshop/itasca.map
layer=lakespy2
layer=dlgstln2

That’s it!

Opening the OpenLayers viewer in the form of a WMS request¶

This feature is useful when debugging WMS requests. You can write one of these by hand, or copy the URL for a WMS tile. Running the following should give you a simple OpenLayers demo around the BBOX (split into several lines for readability):

http://localhost/cgi-bin/mapserv?map=/var/www/workshop/itasca.map
     &LAYERS=lakespy2&VERSION=1.1.1&SERVICE=WMS&REQUEST=GetMap
     &FORMAT=application/openlayers&WIDTH=512&HEIGHT=512&SRS=EPSG:26915
     &BBOX=429956.19803725,5231780.0814818,444078.32296225,5245902.2064068

Here is a quick breakdown of the interesting parts of that URL:

Special Parameter for activating the OpenLayers viewer:
```
FORMAT=application/openlayers
```
Basic MapServer Parameters:
```
map=/var/www/workshop/itasca.map
```

Basic WMS parameters:

#Layers, our bounding box and projection
LAYERS=lakespy2
BBOX=429956.19803725,5231780.0814818,444078.32296225,5245902.2064068
SRS=EPSG:26915

#Version and other WMS request params
SERVICE=WMS
VERSION=1.1.1
REQUEST=GetMap
WIDTH=512
HEIGHT=512
TRANSPARENT=true

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