Brent Fraser wrote:
The short answer is yes, MapServer is a good choice.
Excellent.
The longer answer: You can use Mapserver as a CGI syle
application or use a server-side scripting language such as
perl (see the MapScript section of the Mapserver how-to:
http://ms.gis.umn.edu/docs/howto/) to access MapServer
functions.
I suppose MapScript is basically just a language that is platform
independent, but when I was first reading about it yesterday and found
the following link to "Perl Examples", I was disheartened.
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/docs/howto/perl_examples
A few lines about error handling weren't exactly what I was hoping to
find there.
There is some Perl code in the comments at the bottom of the following
URL that might be a good replacement for that page.
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/docs/howto/mapscript_querying/
Other than those pages, I couldn't find much that would really help me
learn about MapScript and Perl. Maybe I'll just follow along with the
PHP example at the following URL and hope the API is similar. It looks
like the Perl MapScript module follows MapScript's C API; perhaps the
PHP module does, too?
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/docs/howto/phpmapscript-byexample
Is there a MapScript API reference buried somewhere that I could read?
And, also, a map file API reference? I'm really quite lost when it
comes to map files.
Make sure you read the New User page:
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/new_users.
Since you've got your source data already organized, and
Mapserver will supply the server-side functionality (except
for any Perl Mapscript coding you might want to do), likely
most of your effort will be on the client-side interface.
You'll need to select a toolkit if you plan on using a
browser:
1. code your own html (and perhaps Javascript)
2. html + dbox/jbox
3. OpenLayers
4. other...
I would like my first step to be putting a static image on a web site.
The image would be generated by Perl and returned to the browser as a
simple image/png.
The method I have in mind follows.
Each user has a set of airports and routes with which they are
concerned. This set of airports and routes could change as frequently
as every 30 seconds. So, for each map generation request, I would
dynamically create a map file and store it as TEXT in my PostgreSQL
database, along with some unique ID. Then, I would output an <img />
tag to the browser that includes the unique ID of this
dynamically-generated map file:
<img src="/foo/mapImage.pl?id=1234" />
mapImage.pl sees id=1234, pulls map file 1234 out of the database, uses
the MapServer back-end to generate a map, then outputs this map as an
image/png. I think mapImage.pl ends up being pretty simple: create a
mapserver object, pipe the map file text to it, and get the png it
generates. Is that it, or am I thinking too narrowly here?
I may include a time stamp, too, so I can expire map files after some
length of inactivity.
Does this sound about right?
Thanks for your help. :)
Colin
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