GeoServer Beginner's Guide - Second Edition

Adding shapefiles

There are sources of open data available in the shapefile format. We will use the freely available Natural Earth dataset.

Natural Earth provides several datasets about cultural and physical features, packaged in three different reference scales. For more information, visit http://www.naturalearthdata.com.

Now follow the steps to learn how to configure shapefiles on GeoServer:

1. Download the Administrative data as a shapefile and place it in an appropriate folder as follows:

      ~/shapes$ wget http://www.naturalearthdata.com/       http//www.naturalearthdata.com/download/50m/cultural/       ne_50m_admin_0_countries.zip

2. Unzip the archive:

 ~/shapes$ unzip ne_50m_admin_0_countries.zip Archive: ne_50m_admin_0_countries.zip inflating: ne_50m_admin_0_countries.dbf ...