Web Mapping Illustrated

MapScript Examples

MapServer map files are still a key component to writing a MapScript-based application. If you have a map file ready to use, you can start accessing and manipulating it right away. However, a powerful feature of MapScript is the ability to create maps on the fly without having a map file. In this case, you can build your map from scratch.

Figure 14-1. The MapScript API's hierarchical object structure

In the first two examples, a simple map file is used, as shown in Example 14-1. In the third example, a custom map file is created using MapScript. To keep the example short and simple, I've removed optional components like the scale bar, legend, and reference map.

Example 14-1. A simple map file used for the examples in this chapter

MAP
  SIZE 600 300
  EXTENT -180 -90 180 90
  IMAGECOLOR 180 180 250
  IMAGETYPE PNG

  UNITS DD
  WEB
    IMAGEPATH "/srv/www/htdocs/tmp/"
    IMAGEURL "/tmp/"
  END

  LAYER
    NAME countries
    TYPE POLYGON
    STATUS DEFAULT
    DATA countries_simpl
    CLASS
      NAME 'Countries'
      OUTLINECOLOR 100 100 100
      COLOR 200 200 200
    END
  END
END

Tip

You can download the country boundary data in shapefile format from http://ftp.intevation.de/freegis/worlddata/freegis_worlddata-0.1_simpl.tar.gz.

This compressed file contains a shapefile called countries_simpl. The map file example assumes that the countries_simpl.* files are in the same folder as the map file. This dataset is used elsewhere in this book. ...