Creating a WFS Server

The MapServer software can be configured to offer the OGC standardised service interfaces for a Web Feature Service (WFS). Note that this will only work properly for LAYERs that meet the following conditions:

The data source is of a vector type (points, lines, polygons from e.g. shapefiles or PostGIS); LAYER TYPE therefore is one of: POINT, LINE, or POLYGON;
LAYER NAME must be set; Layer names must start with a letter (not a number) and must not have spaces in them;
In the layer definition, the statement DUMP TRUE is included;
The wfs_onlineresource metadata is set in the WEB objects METADATA and specifies the URL that should be used to access your server.

Listing 1 below is an example of a bare minimum WFS Map File with just one layer.

Create a file in the root of your Thailand site with the name configWFS.map and copy the contents of Listing 1 into it. Do not forget to exchange the [NETPATH] parameters with its proper value, as you should have learned in the earlier WMS exercise...

MAP
  NAME Thailand
  PROJECTION
   "init=epsg:4326"
  END
  EXTENT 97.3 5.6 105.7 20.5 # lon/lat extents of Thailand
  WEB
    METADATA
      "ows_enable_request" "*"
	  "map" "[NETPATH]/configWFS.map"
      "ows_title" "Thailand WFS Server"
      "ows_service" "WFS"
      "wfs_onlineresource" "https://gisedu.itc.utwente.nl/cgi-bin/mapserv.exe?map=[NETPATH]/configWFS.map&"
      "ows_srs" "EPSG:4326" #latlon 
    END #metadata
    VALIDATION
      "map" "*"
    END
  END #web
  LAYER
    NAME airportsWFS
    TYPE POINT
    STATUS ON
    CONNECTIONTYPE postgis
    CONNECTION "user=exercises password=exercises dbname=exercises host=gisedu.itc.utwente.nl port=5434 options='-c client_encoding=UTF8'"
    DATA "geom FROM thailand.airports USING UNIQUE id USING srid=4326"
    METADATA
      "wfs_title" "airportsWFS"   
      "gml_include_items" "all"
      "gml_featureid" "id"
      "wfs_srs" "EPSG:4326"
      "wfs_extent" "97.3 5.6 105.7 20.5"
    END #metadata
  END #layer airportsWFS
END #map

MAP

NAME Thailand

PROJECTION

"init=epsg:4326"

END

EXTENT 97.3 5.6 105.7 20.5 # lon/lat extents of Thailand

WEB

METADATA

"ows_enable_request" "*"

"map" "[NETPATH]/configWFS.map"

"ows_title" "Thailand WFS Server"

"ows_service" "WFS"

"wfs_onlineresource" "https://gisedu.itc.utwente.nl/cgi-bin/mapserv.exe?map=[NETPATH]/configWFS.map&"

"ows_srs" "EPSG:4326" #latlon

END #metadata

VALIDATION

"map" "*"

END

END #web

LAYER

NAME airportsWFS

TYPE POINT

STATUS ON

CONNECTIONTYPE postgis

CONNECTION "user=exercises password=exercises dbname=exercises host=gisedu.itc.utwente.nl port=5434 options='-c client_encoding=UTF8'"

DATA "geom FROM thailand.airports USING UNIQUE id USING srid=4326"

METADATA

"wfs_title" "airportsWFS"

"gml_include_items" "all"

"gml_featureid" "id"

"wfs_srs" "EPSG:4326"

"wfs_extent" "97.3 5.6 105.7 20.5"

END #metadata

END #layer airportsWFS

END #map

Creating an OGC Web Feature Service
Using MapServer and PostGIS

Creating a WFS Server

Exercise Sections

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