Publish Layers¶

Supported Layers¶

GeoCat Bridge supports the following layer types:

• Vector (Shapefile, Featureclass)
• Raster (any raster format, when published is exported to GeoTIFF)
• Raster mosaic (GeoServer only requires the config parameter FileRasterByReference to set to True (http://bridge-manual.geocat.net/latest/configuration_extension.html#filevectorbyreference))
• Annotation layers
• Layer groups (when publishing to GeoServer it is required to enable ManagedWorkspacesMode)

How to publish¶

Click on the Publish wizard icon on the Bridge toolbar to open the Publish Wizard dialog.

No data to publish

Publish Wizard dialog¶

The Publish Wizard shows all the publishable layers in your project.

Publish Wizard dialog.

You can select the layers from the list to publish:

Select layers to publish

All: selects all the layers in the list.

None: deselects all the layers in the list.

An icon is shown in the corresponding column after the layer’s metadata and/or map data has been published.

Edit metadata and select attributes¶

In the Publish Wizard dialog the user can for each layer:

• Edit the metadata (see Metadata editing)
• Select the attributes to publish as part of the map service. Attributes can be selected for vector data.

Edit Metadata

Attributes to be published

An information icon is shown in the first column if the metadata is incomplete. In this case the metadata can still be published, but is not valid according to the selected metadata profile. Hold the mouse on the cell of the Publish column for more information about the empty or invalid fields. In the image below, the Description field of layer sites is empty.

Layer metadata status

MapServer featureinfo template¶

When publishing to a MapServer server the tab Advanced Layer Options will be visible. Here you can configure Bridge to use the default template to generate the featureinfo response or set a custom one. Note, this feature is only available for MapServer.

Configure featureinfo templates for MapServer

The default template generated by Bridge includes all the attributes that have been selected to be published (under the tab Data). For numeric fields Bridge will use the scale (i.e.the number of digits to the right of the decimal point) of that particular field. If the generated template does not contain the desired number of decimals for a particular field, you can:

• Create a new field in the dataset and set the correct scale for this
• Generate the template, by first publishing the files locally, modify the template and select this template as the custom template to use

The character encoding of the template is determined by the .cpg file that can be bundled with the Shapefile. If Bridge cannot determine the character encoding of a dataset Bridge will set it to “UTF-8”.

Customize default template¶

The default template can be customized by the user by editing the following files:

• [INSTALLATION DIRECTORY]\templates\style.css
• [INSTALLATION DIRECTORY]\templates\footer.html

The style.css will be included as stylesheet in the default template. The footer.html file will be included below the table element containing the attribute information.

Publishing¶

When you finished configuring the properties for all map layers, click on the Publish button to start the publishing process. During this process, a progress bar is shown to indicate the status of the publishing:

Progress dialog

When the publishing is finished, a summary of the result is shown:

Publish result summary

Note

If a catalogue server (based on GeoNetwork Opensource) is not accessible during the publishing, the following dialog is shown:

Error connecting to GeoNetwork

Note

A similar dialog is shown when the map server is not accessible or doesn’t have the REST API configured properly:

Error connecting to GeoServer

View published data¶

previews metadata of the selected layer. See Metadata preview.

creates a Web Map Context (OGC-WMC) file with the selected layers to publish. To view the map layers online, the file can be opened using a map viewer that supports WMC documents.

The context menu in the layers list provides a quick access to view the published data:

Context menu

• View published metadata: If the metadata is already published in a catalogue server, this option opens a browser to show the metadata from the server.

Published metadata in the GeoNetwork Opensource catalog

• View published layer: If the map data is already published in a map server, this option opens a browser to preview the layer in a map viewer.

is shown if the retrieving data from the servers failed.

Failed to retrieve data from servers

Click the icon to see the error in details:

Error message retrieving layers

Withdraw published data¶

After publishing

removes both the metadata and map data of all selected layers from the publishing server(s).

If you want to withdraw only metadata or map data, you could use the context menu in the layers list: (See :ref:`Context menu <context_menu>`)

• Withdraw published metadata: remove the metadata from the catalogue server.
• Withdraw published layer: remove the map data from the map server.

Warning

Use this option with caution as the metadata and data are removed from the servers.Note that local metadata and map data are not removed.

Advanced publishing options¶

Click the Advanced button to customize the publishing options. By default, map data and metadata are published on the default map and catalogue servers.

• Select to publish: publishes metadata, map data, symbology or a combination of these three
• Select an alternative server to publish the data (only available in the Premium version): in the Premium version, alternative servers can be configured using the Server Configuration panel. See Server configuration.

Advanced publishing options

• Offline publishing: It is possible to save metadata and symbology of the map (Styled Layer Descriptor - SLD documents for GeoServer and MapFile for MapServer) to a local folder on your computer. Later on you can publish these files manually using the administration interfaces that both GeoNetwork and GeoServer provide. To save the files locally, click on the Advanced button and select Publish offline, create files locally. By default, the files are created in the My Documents folder. To select another folder, click button
  • For saving metadata locally, you will need to configure a GeoNetwork connection, because Bridge needs to get the metadata profile from the GeoNetwork connection.
  • For exporting the map data and symbology for GeoServer locally, you can simply select GeoServer from the right dropdown menu.
  • For exporting the map data and symbology to MapServer locally, you will need to configure a MapServer connection first. Bridge needs the MapServer configuration parameters to correctly generate a MapFile.

Offline publishing