Quickstart¶

Installation¶

Follow the instructions of the installation page and come back here once done. Make sure the virtual Python environment is activated before you proceed with the next section.

Creating the application¶

Here you’re going to use the framework to create your first MapFish application.

Generating the base¶

Use:

(env) $ paster create -t mapfish MapFishApp

MapFishApp is the name of the MapFish application you’re creating, you can pick any name of your choice. We’ll assume that you choose MapFishApp in the rest of this quickstart.

When asked what template engine to use answer mako, which is the default. When asked if SQLAlchemy 0.5 configuration is to be included, answer True, as your MapFish application will include web services relying on database tables.

You should now have a folder named MapFishApp. This folder contains your application files.

Now check that your MapFish application works. For this go into the MapFishApp folder and start the application:

(env) $ cd MapFishApp
(env) $ paster serve development.ini

This command starts your application in the Paster web server, which is a pure-Python web server commonly used during development.

Open http://localhost:5000 in your web browser, you should get the default page:

Installing the JavaScript toolbox¶

You are now going to install the MapFish JavaScript toolbox in your application. This toolbox includes:

• the Ext, OpenLayers, GeoExt and MapFish Client JavaScript libraries,
• a sample JavaScript application based on those libraries,
• a build profile for minifying the JavaScript code of this sample application,
• a JavaScript testing framework, with a test example

Enter Ctrl+C to stop the Paster server and proceed with these commands:

(env) $ cd ..
(env) $ paster create -t mapfish_client MapFishApp

When asked whether to overwrite index.html answer y. This will overwrite the index.html page you saw in the last section by the one provided by the mapfish_client template. When asked whether to overwrite favicon.png also answer y.

Start the application again:

(env) $ cd MapFishApp
(env) $ paster serve --reload development.ini

Note

Note the use of the --reload switch. This switch makes the Paste server monitor all Python modules used by the MapFishApp application and reload itself automatically if any of them is modified or if new modules are created. This is especially useful during development.

Open or reload http://localhost:5000 in your web browser, you should now get the default user interface:

This default user interface is composed of: a map, a toolbar above the map with tools acting on the map, and a layer tree for controlling the visibility of layers. The map itself is composed of two OpenStreetMap layers.

The default user interface is provided to the application developer as an example. The application developer is free to build on it, or delete it to write his own if he wants.

Creating a web service¶

MapFish provides a command for generating web services implementing the MapFish Protocol. A MapFish web service relies on geographic database table.

Before creating web services you need to set up the connection to the geographic database. For this quickstart an existing public database will be used. In real-life scenarios, the database system and the MapFish application execute on the same host or on hosts of the same private network.

To set up the database connection edit development.ini and replace the line

sqlalchemy.url = sqlite:///%(here)s/development.db

by this one:

sqlalchemy.url = postgres://quickstart:quickstart@www.mapfish.org:5432/quickstart

The connection string specifies that the postgres driver must be used, the database system is located at www.mapfish.org on port 5432, and the name of the database is quickstart.

Now that the database connection is set up, you’re ready to create the web service. Creating a web service is done in three steps:

1. create a layer configuration in the layers.ini file, in our case we’re going rely on the table named countries in the database, so the configuration is:

   [countries]
   singular=country
   plural=countries
   table=countries
   epsg=4326
   geomcolumn=the_geom
   

   singular provides a singular name for the layer. plural provides a plural name for the layer. Both are used by the code generator when substituting variables. table provides the name of the database. epsg provides the coordinate system of the table data. geomcolumn provides the name of the geometry column.

2. generate the web service code with the mf-layer command:

   (env) $ paster mf-layer countries

3. configure a route to the countries controller, this is done by adding the following statement after the “CUSTOM ROUTES HERE” comment in the mapfishapp/config/routing.py file:

   map.resource("country", "countries")
   

Watch the indentation! 4 spaces are needed here.

If you stopped paster serve or if you did not add the --reload switch, restart MapFishApp with:

(env) $ paster serve --reload development.ini

You can now open http://localhost:5000/countries?limit=1 in your browser, you should see a GeoJSON representation of the first object in the countries table:

Creating search functionality¶

Now that the countries web service works, let’s create a search functionality based on that web service. This search functionality will involve displaying a popup containing information about the country that is clicked by the user.

Edit the mapfishapp/public/app/js/mapfishapp_layout.js file, look up the createTbarItems() function, and insert a new GeoExt.Action to the array returned by the function by adding the following code to the function (If unsure, see this file):

actions.push(new GeoExt.Action({
    iconCls: "info",
    map: map,
    toggleGroup: "tools",
    allowDepress: false,
    tooltip: "Query",
    control: new mapfish.Searcher.Map({
        url: "countries",
        protocol: {
            params: {
                epsg: "900913",
                attrs: "pays,continent",
                no_geom: true
            }
        },
        displayDefaultPopup: true
    })
}));

In the above code a GeoExt.Action configured with mapfish.Searcher.Map is added to the array of actions. The mapfish.Searcher.Map object is connected to the countries web service through the url option. In this example the mapfish.Searcher.Map object displays a default popup containing the name of the clicked country, and the name of is continent.