Map Engine WMS

The minimum setup required for a WMS map engine is the capabilities URL for the service.

Optionally you can specify the format of the image generated (gif, jpeg, png, etc.) if the background of the image should be transparent or not, and if not, the colour of the background.
You are also able to change the colours or styling Weave uses to colour selections.

A WMS Tester tool is available from here. It can help resolve issues with WMS servers.

Namespace

urn:com.cohga.server.map.wms#1.0

Tags

mapengine

Properties

Name	Type	Required	Default	Description
id	string	yes		Unique identifier
url	string	yes		The capabilities URL for the WMS service. You should not include the SERVICE, REQUEST or VERSION parameters in the URL, just use the base URL, these parameters will be added automatically based on the type of request that is being made. Note: WMS version 1.3.0 may be forced on by including the URL VERSION parameter, however, this is not recommended and Weave will use WMS version 1.1.1 by default.
format	string	no	first format reported by map engine	Default format that the map engine will request from the WMS server if one is not specified.
transparent	boolean	no	false	Determines if the areas of the image not covered by spatial data are rendered as transparent or as a solid colour (as set by the background property). Enabling transparency requires an image format that supports it (jpeg and png24 do not).
background	integer	no	white	The RGB value for the image background if transparency is not enabled
username	string	no		A username for connecting to the server.
password	string	no		A password for connecting to the server. This should be encrypted using 'encrypt' at the osgi prompt.
qgis	boolean	no		Force the map engine to be treated as though it were QGIS. Weave will try to determine if the underlying WMS service is provided by QGIS and perform additional optimisations and expose additional capabilities if it is. Sometimes Weave might not be able to determine this correctly, in which case you can set this property to true in the configuration and the map engine will be treated as though it were being served from QGIS. If Weave incorrectly determines that the WMS service is QGIS when it is not, then you can set this property to `false` to disable the additional functionality. (Note: Weave does not automatically identify QGIS 3.4 hence the need to set `qgis=true`.)
geoserver	boolean	no		Force the map engine to be treated as though it were GeoServer. Weave will try and determine if the underlying WMS service is provided by GeoServer and perform additional optimisations and expose additional capabilities if it is. Sometimes Weave might not be able to determine this correctly, in which case you can set this property to true in the configuration and the map engine will be treated as though it were being served from GeoServer. If Weave incorrectly determines that the WMS service is GeoServer when it is not, then you can set this property to `false` to disable the additional functionality.
arcgis	boolean	no		Force the map engine to be treated as though it were ArcGIS. Weave will try and determine if the underlying WMS service is provided by ArcGIS and perform additional optimisations and expose additional capabilities if it is. Sometimes Weave might not be able to determine this correctly, in which case you can set this property to true in the configuration and the map engine will be treated as though it were being served from ArcGIS. If Weave incorrectly determines that the WMS service is ArcGIS when it is not, then you can set this property to `false` to disable the additional functionality.
arcims	boolean	no		For those still using ArcIMS I'm sure you can figure out what this property does by reading the three properties before this one
disableTests	boolean	no	false	Set to true to disable the background checks to validate WMS connections
testInterval	integer	no	60,000	Milliseconds between tests when the WMS connection is working (minimum 15,000)
testIntervalWhileFailing	integer	no	15,000	Milliseconds between tests when the WMS connection is failing (minimum 5,000)
testFailingDuration	integer	no	300,000	How long before a failing WMS connection is determined to have failed (minimum 60,000)
testIntervalWhenFailed	integer	no	600,000	Milliseconds between tests when the WMS connection has failed (minimum 120,000)
cql	boolean	no	false	Set to true if the map engine supports filtering using CQL. If the map engine is one that is not directly supported by Weave but does support using CQL to filter layers then setting this to true will enable the support for layer filtering using CQL.
cqlparamname	string	no	cql_filter	The name of the parameter to add to the request URL if CQL filtering support was enabled by setting cql to true
cqlseparator	string	no	;	The filter separator to add to the request if CQL filtering support was enabled by setting cql to true

Sub-tags

Name	Type	Cardinality	Description
layers	#layers	0..1	Refine what layers are included in the map description.
sort	#sort	0..1
styles	#style	0..1
crs	#crs	0..n	Refine what CRSs the map engine lists as being supported, as opposed to including all of them (as there might be thousands of CRSs that the WMS server says that it supports). Without any `crs` tags a map engine will report all the projections the WMS server says it supports. By adding one or more `crs` tag you can refine this list so that the map engine only includes those projections that you're actually interested in using (which helps to improve performance).
tokens	#tokens	0..1	Additional tokens to add to the request. The tokens available are dependent on the WMS server implementation and are generally used to support implementation specific extensions to the WMS specification.
legend	#legend	0..1	Modify the legend. Available from 2.6.9.

layers

Sub-tags

Name	Type	Cardinality
layer	#layer	0..n
remove	#remove	0..1

You should include one remove tag or one or more layer tags, not both.

remove

Sub-tags

Name	Type	Cardinality
layer	#layer	1..n

sort

Properties

Name	Type	Required	Description
method	"firsttolast" or "lasttofirst"	no	Default is `firsttolast`. It specifies if the layer list specifies layers to be sorted from top to bottom or from bottom to top.

Sub-tags

Name	Type	Cardinality
layer	#layer	2..n

layer

Content

The id of the layer

You do not need to include all layers in the layer list, only those you want moved, which is where the method property comes in. If you want to list a handful of layers to draw on top then just list them and use firsttolast (or don't set the method). If you only want to list a handful of layers to move to the bottom on the map then just list them and use lasttofirst.

styles

Properties

None.

Sub-tags

Name	Type	Cardinality
style	#style	1..n

style

Properties

Name	Type	Required	Description
layer	string	yes	The id of the layer, from the map engine, to override the style for
name	string	yes	The name of the style to use

crs

Properties

Name	Type	Required	Description
force	boolean	no	Ensure the CRS is added to the list of available CRSs even if the underlying server doesn't indicate that it supports the EPSG code

Content

The EPSG code of the coordinate reference system to add

tokens

Tokens provide a way for the administrator to include additional parameters in the URL sent to the WMS server

Properties

Name	Type	Required	Default	Description
tokenJoinDelimiter	string	no	;	value to use to join multiple tokens with the same name, since 2.6.7

Sub-tags

Name	Type	Cardinality
token	#token	1..n

token

Properties

Name	Type	Required	Default	Description
name	string	yes		The name of the token
value	string	yes		The value of the token
legendOnly	boolean	no	false if layer is empty true if layer is not empty	Should this token only be applied to requests that are generating a legend
layer	string	no		Comma separated list of layer id's for which this token should be included, can be used to further restrict when the token is sent, and allows for different tokens to be sent for different layers. Only applies if legendOnly is true
prefix	string	no		Value to be prepended to the token value, since 2.6.7
infix	string	no	or	Value to be used to join multiple user attributes, since 2.6.7
suffix	string	no		Value to be appended to the token value, since 2.6.7
default	string	no		Value to be used if user attribute substitution does not provide a value, since 2.6.7

legend

Properties

Sub-tags

Name	Type	Cardinality
remove	#remove	0..1

Examples

Filtering layers to only include specific layers

<wms:mapengine id="test">
  <url>http://server/wms/test</url>
  <layers>
    <layer>point1</layer>
    <layer>point2</layer>
    <layer>line1</layer>
    <layer>line2</layer>
    <layer>polygon1</layer>
    <layer>polygon2</layer>
  </layers>
</wms:mapengine>

Filtering layers to remove specific layers

<wms:mapengine id="test">
  <url>http://server/wms/test</url>
  <layers>
    <remove>
      <layer>point2</layer>
      <layer>line2</layer>
      <layer>polygon2</layer>
    </remove>
  </layers>
</wms:mapengine>

Sorting layers

<wms:mapengine id="test">
  <url>http://server/wms/test</url>
  <sort>
    <layer>point1</layer>
    <layer>point2</layer>
    <layer>line1</layer>
    <layer>line2</layer>
    <layer>polygon1</layer>
    <layer>polygon2</layer>
  </sort>
</wms:mapengine>

Sorting layers by moving one layer to the bottom

<wms:mapengine id="test">
  <url>http://server/wms/test</url>
  <sort method='lasttofirst'>
    <layer>photo</layer>
  </sort>
</wms:mapengine>

Applying styles

<wms:mapengine id="test">
  <url>http://server/wms/test</url>
  <styles>
    <style layer="property" name="bw_property"/>
    <style layer="road" name="bw_road"/>
  </styles>
</wms:mapengine>

Adding authentication

<wms:mapengine id="test">
  <url>http://username:password@server/wms/test</url>
</wms:mapengine>

Refine the list of supported CRS's for the map engine

<wms:mapengine id="test">
  <url>http://server/wms/test</url>
  <crs>EPSG:4326</crs>
  <crs>EPSG:28355</crs>
  <crs>EPSG:3857</crs>
</wms:mapengine>

Adding tokens

<wms:mapengine id="test">
  <url>http://server/wms/test</url>
  <tokens>
    <token name="VIEWPARAMS" value="${user.filter.status}" prefix="STATUS:" infix=","/>
    <token name="VIEWPARAMS" value="USER:${user.id}"/>
    <token name="BACKFILL" value="true" legendOnly="true" layer="ward,busroutes"/> <!-- BACKFILL will be true for ward and busroutes -->
    <token name="BACKFILL" value="false" legendOnly="true"/> <!-- BACKFILL will be false for any other layers -->
  </tokens>
</wms:mapengine>

Remove layers from the legend

<wms:mapengine id="test">
  <url>http://server/wms/test</url>
  <legend>
    <remove>
      <layer>mann:easetxt</layer>
      <layer>mann:house_numbers</layer>
    </remove>
  </legend>
</wms:mapengine>

As of version 1.3.7 of the WMS bundle, the password can be encrypted using the OSGi encrypt command.

WMS 1.3.0

Don't "upgrade" to WMS 1.3.0 unless you really have to.

Version 2.15.16 of the com.cohga.server.map.wms bundle (released as part of Weave 2.5.21) improves support for WMS 1.3.0 by supporting map services that require their axis order to be swapped.

Weave disables the use of WMS 1.3.0 when communicating with a WMS server unless it's specifically asked to, which can be done by including a VERSION parameters in the map engine url attribute, e.g.

Enabling support for WMS 1.3.0

<wms:mapengine id="test">
  <url>http://server/wms/test?VERSION=1.3.0</url>
</wms:mapengine>

This is typically all you need to do to enable support for WMS 1.3.0. It is possible that you may be using a coordinate reference system that requires requests sent to the server to reverse the order of x, y coordinates. It is updated 2.14.16 of the Weave WMS map engine bundle that allows you to tell Weave to change the order of the coordinates when sending requests to the server. This is done by setting swapAxis to true in the map engine config, e.g.

Swapping coordinate order for a WMS map engine

<wms:mapengine id="test">
  <url>http://server/wms/test?VERSION=1.3.0</url>
  <swapAxis>true</swapAxis>
</wms:mapengine>

Once this is done Weave will send the bounding box parameter in miny, minx, maxy, maxx order, rather than minx, miny, maxx, maxy.

Note that when swapAxis is true swapping the axis order is done for all map requests sent to the server, so if you're trying to use a map service using a coordinate reference system that requires swapping of the coordinates, for example, EPSG:3006, along with a coordinate reference system that doesn't, for example, EPSG:3857, then you will need to create two map engines, one with swapAxis set to true and one without, and use the appropriate map engine for the different clients (since it's the crs attribute in the clients' map view that determines what coordinate reference system will be used, and it's the coordinate reference system in WMS 1.3.0 that determines the axis order).

Further to this, the change between 2.14.16 and 2.15.16 adds the ability for Weave to determine automatically if it should swap the axis or not when working with WMS 1.3, removing the need to use the swapAxis setting at all and the need to have two map engines configured if you need to use both swapped and un-swapped axis (you still need to include VERSION=1.3.0 in the URL, to enable WMS 1.3 support, but that too may be removed eventually).

To enable the automatic determination of whether to swap the axis or not, you must update your startup setting to remove the org.geotools.referencing.forceXY setting. This is done by editing startup.cmd (or startup.sh)or editing wrapper.conf and removing the option that sets this property to true, otherwise, Weave will always think that the axis order is x, y regardless of the projection used.

Note that setting swapAxis to false will force x, y ordering of the axis regardless of what the projection information says.

Metromap

When using Metromap as a WMS map engine, there are two different methods available to provide the API key in the URL you have to configure for the map engine. One format sets the API key as a parameter and the other method embeds the API key within the URL path, see this page for more info.

The format with the API key set as a query parameter will not work with Weave, you have to use the format where the API key is provided as part of the URL path as shown below.

Required format for Metromap URL

https://api.metromap.com.au/api-link/{YOUR_API_KEY}/wms