There are 3 pieces to this: 1) in your mapfile you have to add validation for your query string to the layer metadata:
LAYER NAME 'testy' ... METADATA ... qstring_validation_pattern 'some regex' END END and you have to define a template, I prefer the new-style templates via an output format: OUTPUTFORMAT NAME 'bbox' DRIVER TEMPLATE MIMETYPE 'MIMETYPE 'text/html' TEMPLATE 'bbox.html' END 2) now create the template (bbox.html): <!-- MapServer Template --> [resultset layer="testy"] [feature] [shpext expand="20%"] [/feature] [/resultset] (Note that in 5.6 you can set a few attributes in most extent-related tags to project and expand the output. This is very handy when getting extents to create other maps so you leave some space around a feature.) 3) and finally a URL... http://.../cgi-bin/mapserv?map=your.map&mode=itemquery&qitem=parcel_id&qstring=12345678&qlayer=testy&qformat=bbox You could create templates more conducive to use with AJAX, perhaps JSON or XML. You have lots of control... Steve ________________________________________ From: David Hildebrand [david.hildebr...@afsc.ca] Sent: Tuesday, November 23, 2010 5:58 PM To: Lime, Steve D (DNR); mapserver-users@lists.osgeo.org Subject: RE: [mapserver-users] RE: querying to getting bounding box coordinates I wanted to retain WMS compatibility but the WMS protocol does not seem to support attribute queries. I know I can use GetFeatureInfo to get attributes including the bounding box of the feature because these are CGI variables. However, GetFeatureInfo uses a spatial query (an image point). If I use MapServer's mode=itemquery what would be the URL syntax and the requirements on the server side? Would I be able to specify or determine the projection? Thanks for your help. =========================== David V. Hildebrand Agriculture Financial Services Corporation (403) 782-8239 www.afsc.ca <http://www.afsc.ca> This communication is intended for the use of the recipient to which it is addressed, and may contain confidential, personal and/or privileged information. Please contact Agriculture Financial Services Corporation immediately if you are not the intended recipient of this communication, and do not copy, distribute, or take action relying on it. Any communication received in error, or subsequent reply, should be deleted or destroyed. Please consider the environment before printing this email. -----Original Message----- From: mapserver-users-boun...@lists.osgeo.org [mailto:mapserver-users-boun...@lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Lime, Steve D (DNR) Sent: Tuesday, November 23, 2010 3:52 PM To: David Hildebrand; mapserver-users@lists.osgeo.org Subject: [mapserver-users] RE: querying to getting bounding box coordinates Are you limited to WMS/WFS or can you use stock MapServer queries? Passing in a parcel id and returning it's bounding box is trivial using mode=itemquery and a template. Steve -----Original Message----- From: mapserver-users-boun...@lists.osgeo.org [mailto:mapserver-users-boun...@lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of David Hildebrand Sent: Tuesday, November 23, 2010 2:49 PM To: mapserver-users@lists.osgeo.org Subject: [mapserver-users] querying to getting bounding box coordinates I am running a WMS service with Mapserver in a Windows environment. I want to be able to run a non-spatial query on a parcel layer to return the bounding box (in re-projected coordinates) for a particular parcel. The bounding box and projection will then be used in a WMS query to return a map image. I've never coded server-side functionality with Mapserver so any suggestions would be welcome. Thanks to all. =========================== David V. Hildebrand Agriculture Financial Services Corporation (403) 782-8239 www.afsc.ca <http://www.afsc.ca> This communication is intended for the use of the recipient to which it is addressed, and may contain confidential, personal and/or privileged information. Please contact Agriculture Financial Services Corporation immediately if you are not the intended recipient of this communication, and do not copy, distribute, or take action relying on it. Any communication received in error, or subsequent reply, should be deleted or destroyed. Please consider the environment before printing this email. _______________________________________________ mapserver-users mailing list mapserver-users@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/mapserver-users _______________________________________________ mapserver-users mailing list mapserver-users@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/mapserver-users _______________________________________________ mapserver-users mailing list mapserver-users@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/mapserver-users