[Chameleon] WFS client and HTTP GET/POST

[Kralidis,Tom [Burlington]]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bart van den Eijnden [mailto:bartvde@xs4all.nl] 
> Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2003 12:37 PM
> To: chameleon@lists.maptools.org
> Subject: [Chameleon] WFS client and HTTP GET/POST
> 
> 
> Hi list,
> 
> I would like to discuss an "issue" which has come accross my 
> path when 
> trying to implement Chameleon functionality, and then especially the 
> ExtractWFSData widget, on a server different from Mapserver. 
> I know this 
> is probably a long term issue, but anyway, always good to 
> discuss these 
> things a.s.a.p in my opinion. Also, it is both a PHP Mapscript and a 
> Chameleon issue.
> 
> In the code of the ExtractWFSData widget it is assumed that 
> the WFS server 
> supports the DCPTYPE HTTP GET request for GetFeature on the 
> WFS interface. 
> For Mapserver this is true, but when I am using the ArcIMS 
> WFS Connector, 
> it only supports DCPTYPE HTTP POST. Ofcourse those things are 
> advertized 
> through the GetCapabilities interface, but for many requests the 
> GetCapabilities interface is skipped which is quite logical 
> taking into 
> account performance.
> 

Most OGC:WFS instances will probably support HTTP POST, given the rich
Filter interface they can support.

> Will the PHP/Mapscript code be enhanced in future, to support also an 
> advanced WFS Client which can use both GET and POST, and will 
> Chameleon 
> use this functionality from PHP/Mapscript?
> 
> And will there be more wfs metadata tags then describing 
> which DCPTYPE 
> (HTTP GET/POST) is supported for the various WFS interfaces, 
> so the WFS 
> client will know what to do, or will the capabilities be 
> parsed for this?
> 

This is a general issue on how OGC:WFS is handled/parsed.  I think a generic
OGC:WFS widget should be able to parse Capabilities XML and all its fine
grained elements/attributes.

> Best regards,
> Bart
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