Mapping Hacks

Publish Your Geodata to the Web with GeoServer #89

Chapter 8, Building the Geospatial Web

|

447

HACK

way to get started is to grab the WAR file: the latest version is always geo-

server.war. This can be dropped right into the Servlet Container’s webapps

directory, without requiring more Java expertise. To build it from scratch

requires the

ant build tool.

Starting up GeoServer

The .war contains all the code, libraries, and configuration files to run Geo-

Server. Both Tomcat and Resin have a directory named webapps/ where the

.war file should be placed. If the container is already running, it may need

to be restarted, but as soon as it is, the .war will expand and GeoServer will

load up. The best way to check to see if GeoServer is working is to issue a

GetCapabilities request through any web browser. If the container is run-

ning on your local machine on the default port, the capabilities request will

look like this:

http://localhost:8080/geoserver/wfs?request=GetCapabilities

This should return a WFS Capabilities.xsd document with sample values.

You should also see a couple of FeatureTypes, samples in the default Geo-

Server installation. These can be queried with

GetFeature and

DescribeFeatureType requests. GeoServer also has an integrated Web Map

Server; its Capabilities document is queried in a similar way:

http://localhost:8080/geoserver/wms?request=GetCapabilities

Configuring GeoServer. Now that