FeatureServer 1.12

A server for geographic features on the web.

===============
featureserver
===============

---------------------------------------
Simple Python geographic feature server
---------------------------------------

:Author: [e-mail]
:Date: 2008-05-06
:Version: 1.12
:Manual group: GIS Utilities

DESCRIPTION
===========
FeatureServer is a simple Python-based geographic feature server. It allows
you to store geogrpahic vector features in a number of different backends,
and interact with them -- creating, updating, and deleting -- via a
REST-based API.

FeatureServer will run under Python CGI, mod_python, or as a standalone server.

FeatureServer was designed as a companion to OpenLayers, the BSD licensed web
mapping interface. For help with setting up FeatureServer for use with
OpenLayers, please feel free to stop by #featureserver, on irc.freenode.net, or
to send email to [e-mail].

FeatureServer is released under a copyright only open source license similar
to the BSD license.

RUNNING UNDER CGI
=================

* Extract the code to some web directory (e.g. in /var/www).
* Edit featureserver.cfg to point the 'file' attribute of the 'scribble'
datasource to the location you wish to save your database.
* Permit CGI execution in the FeatureServer directory.
For example, if FeatureServer is to be run with Apache, the
following must be added in your Apache configuration,
where /var/www/featureserver is the directory resulting from
the code extraction.

::

<Directory /var/www/featureserver>
AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
Options +ExecCGI
</Directory>

* Visit:

http://example.com/yourdir/featureserver.cgi/scribble/all.atom

* If you see an empty GeoRSS feed, you have set up your configuration
correctly. Congrats!

Python Prerequisites
--------------------
In order to use the default demo included with FeatureServer, you must have
the simplejson module installed. If you do not, you can add it by doing the
following:

$ wget http://cheeseshop.python.org/packages/source/s/simplejson/simplejson-1.7.1.tar.gz
$ tar -zvxf simplejson-1.7.1.tar.gz
$ cp -r simplejson-1.7.1/simplejson /var/www/featureserver

Note that these instructions are for Linux systems: the end goal is to extract
the simplejson directory from the distribution and put it in the root of your
FeatureServer install.

Other dependancies for DataSources and Services are outlined in their
respective documentation files.

Non-standard Python Location
----------------------------
If your Python is not at /usr/bin/python on your system, you will need to
change the first line of featureserver.cgi to reference the location of your
Python binary. A common example is:

::

#!/usr/local/bin/python

Under Apache, you might see an error message like:

::

[Wed Mar 14 19:55:30 2007] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] (2)No such file or
directory: exec of '/www/featureserver.cgi' failed

to indicate this problem.

You can typically locate where Python is installed on your system via the
command 'which python'.

Windows users: If you are using Windows, you should change the first line
of featureserver.cgi to read:

::

#!C:/Python/python.exe -u

C:/Python should match the location Python is installed under on your
system. In Python 2.5, this location is C:/Python25 by default.

RUNNING UNDER MOD_PYTHON
========================

* Extract the code to some web directory (e.g. /var/www).
* Edit featureserver.cfg to point the 'file' attribute of the 'scribble'
datasource to the location you wish to save your database.
* Add the following to your Apache configuration, under a <Directory> heading:

::

AddHandler python-program .py
PythonPath sys.path+['/path/to/featureserver/FeatureServer', '/path/to/featureserver']
PythonHandler FeatureServer.Server
PythonOption FeatureServerConfig /path/to/featureserver.cfg

* An example might look like:

::

<Directory /var/www/featureserver/>
AddHandler python-program .py
PythonPath sys.path+['/var/www/featureserver/FeatureServer', '/var/www/featureserver']
PythonHandler FeatureServer.Server
PythonOption FeatureServerConfig /var/www/featureserver/featureserver.cfg
</Directory>

* In this example, /var/www/featureserver is the directory resulting from
the code extraction.
* Visit the URL described above, replacing featureserver.cgi with
featureserver.py
* If you see an empty GeoRSS file you have set up your configuration correctly.
Congrats!
* Note that mod_python has not yet been well tested, and may not work well
for all data sources.


RUNNING STANDALONE (UNDER WSGI)
===============================

FeatureServer comes with a standalone HTTP server which uses the WSGI handler.
This implementation depends on *Python Paste*, which can be downloaded from:

http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi/Paste

For versions of Python earlier than 2.5, you will also need to install
wsgiref:

http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi/wsgiref

Once you have all the prerequisites installed, simply run:

::

python featureserver_http_server.py

This will start a webserver listening on port 8080, after which you should
be able to open:

::

http://hostname:8080/scribble/all.atom

to see your first file.

RUNNING UNDER FASTCGI
=====================

FeatureServer comes with a fastcgi implementation. In order to use this
implementation, you will need to install flup, available from:

http://trac.saddi.com/flup

This implementation also depends on Python Paste, which can be downloaded
from:

http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi/Paste

Once you have done this, you can configure your fastcgi server to use
featureserver.fcgi.

Configuring FastCGI is beyond the scope of this documentation.

CONFIGURATION
=============
FeatureServer is configured by a config file, defaulting to featureserver.cfg.
FeatureServer data source documentation is available in doc/DataSources.

USING FEATURESERVER WITH OPENLAYERS
===================================

To run OpenLayers with FeatureServer, the URL passed to the
OpenLayers.Layer.WFS constructor must point to the FeatureServer script,
i.e. featureserver.cgi or featureserver.py. As an example see the
index.html file included in the FeatureServer distribution.

Note: index.html assumes FeatureServer is set up under CGI (see above).
If you set up FeatureServer under mod_python you'd need to slighly
modify index.html: the URL passed to the OpenLayers.Layer.WFS constructor
must point to the mod_python script as opposed to the CGI script, so replace
featureserver.cgi with featureserver.py. Similarly, you would need to edit
this URL if you were to use FeatureServer with the standalone HTTP Server
or FastCGI.

SEE ALSO
========

http://featureserver.org/

http://openlayers.org/