GeoExplorer for GeoServer

GeoExplorer for GeoServer (aka GSPreview) is a version of GeoExplorer specially tailored for displaying, querying, and searching across layers in a local GeoServer instance. Its goal is to augment the current GeoServer Map Preview with an interactive GeoExt application—retaining all the useful features of the original and extending it with new capabilities and usability improvements afforded by GeoExplorer.

Feature Lists

  • Competition: the current GeoServer Map Preview; GeoExplorer
  • Vision: A pie-in-the-sky feature list, straight from the mouth of an excited cholmes.
  • Critique: Starting from Drake 0.1 (demo), we have a lot of ground to cover. Here are some of the shortcomings of the current UI, as listed by a developer and frequent user of the current map preview page.

Road Map

This application is only going to *start* as a preview, obviously there's plenty you could do with a nice client hooked up to all the data and configuration that GeoServer provides. I think there are three fairly distinct phases that the app will go through, the core functionality of each phase providing the basis for the functionality to follow.

  • GSPreview: At the end of the preview app phase, we'll have a tool for exploring the layers available from a WMS server. I suspect that we'll be able to finish this without relying on any special functionality of GeoServer; it will be read-only and not deal with configuration, so WMS and WFS should be sufficient. The elevator pitch for this stage is: let the user mix and match preconfigured layers from a WMS, exposing alternative styles and formats, and presenting the actual data in a tabular view if it is also available via WFS. This is pretty much the bare minimum before there's a decent case for replacing the current preview page.
  • 'GeoMixer' for GeoServer: Take the existing data in a GeoServer and do your own thing with it. Build styles, create embedded maps, send your friends links. The elevator pitch for this stage is: make their map yours (ie, you don't control the data, but you can make your own look).
  • GeoServer Configuration: This is pretty much what it sounds like—an application that lets users configure all the GeoServer settings, such as editing the metadata and such inline.

Milestones for the Preview Application

The following milestones incorporate the functionality we need for phase one, a preview application that exposes as much info and as many options as it can without modifying anything on the server side.

Design

Specs

See also: GeoExplorer Specs

Map properties (#73, #77): The map properties dialog in GSPreview differs from the generic GeoExplorer in that it includes a Display tab (#11) for managing the tiling in the map pane and a Filter tab (#12, #29) for setting a filter for each WMS layer that is backed by a vector dataset. Like GeoExplorer, it allows maps to be exported (#10) as KML (#69), PDF (#68), or permalinks (#19, #70).

Save map (#20, #21, #22): This feature functions as in the GeoExplorer Specs.

Print (#84): TBD

Select tool (#13): This tool functions as it would in GeoExplorer or Alachua.

Get Info tool (#65, #71, #72): This tool functions as in the GeoExplorer Specs.

Find tool: This tool functions as in the GeoExplorer Specs.

Measure tool: This tool functions as in the GeoExplorer Specs.

Zoom controls (#66, #75): In addition to the standard GeoExplorer zoom controls, GSPreview allows users to choose projections from a drop-down in the toolbar (#64).

Layer controls (#62, #76): These function similarly to GeoExplorer but allow layers to be grouped (#74, #78).

Legend view (#18): TBD

Scale, Compass, and Coords: GSPreview displays mouse coordinates (#79) in the lower right corner of the map panel in addition to the standard scale and compass provided in GeoExplorer.

Attachments