GSIP 46

GSIP 46 - Creating new feature types from GUI and from REST api

Overview

GeoServer so far allowed only the configuration of existing feature types as new layers. This proposal leverages the DataAccess.createSchema (…) GeoTools API to support actual feature type creation

Proposed By

Andrea Aime

Assigned to Release

GeoServer 2.1

State

Choose one of: Under Discussion, In Progress, Completed, Rejected, Deferred

Motivation

We want to provide the ability to create new feature types ready for WFS-T editing with the usual GeoServer ease of use.

Creation via the GUI allows the point and click admin to easily create a new feature type by defining the feature type details, creation via REST POST allows rich clients to provide the same in a dynamic user interface.

Proposal

The proposed changes have already been implemented and available at: [http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/GEOS-3872]

In particular, the GUI workflow can be seen in the following screencast (encoded with Theora/OGG, you ’ll need a client like Videolan to view it):[http://sigma.openplans.org/~aaime/newFeatureType.ogv]

The REST creation on the other side allows a user to POST a feature type definition to the following URL:

http://host:port/geoserver/rest/workspaces/<workspacename>/datastores/<dsname>/featuretypes

In order to better support feature type creation the AttributeInfo class has been expanded to provide binding, nullability and attribute length. This reflects also on all the GET requests, making the feature type description richer.

Also, a concept of default store per workspace has been implemented to complement the default workspace one in order to make it possible for the clients to have a default entry point for creating a new feature type using:

http://host:port/geoserver/rest/workspaces/default/datastores/default/featuretypes

“default” was before just a convention in the REST config API, making it possible to have clashes with same named workspaces. The patch makes “default” a reserved keyword making the clashes impossible.

Feedback

This section should contain feedback provided by PSC members who may have a problem with the proposal.

Backwards Compatibility

The only backwards incompatible change is the making of “default” into a reserved keyword, old data directories using “default” as a store or workspace name will fail to import.

Voting

• Alessio Fabiani +0
• Simone Giannecchini +0
• Andrea Aime +1
• Chris Holmes (Chair)
• Jody Garnett + 1
• Rob Atkinson +1
• Ben Caradoc Davies +1
• Mark Leslie +1

Links

JIRA Task Email Discussion Wiki Page