svgserver

Renders maps with Mapserver into layered SVG files where each layer is a separate SVG layer (group).

svgserver makes direct calls to the Mapserver binary. HTTP calls to an an existing Mapserver WMS are not supported.

svgserver accepts WMS requests at the /svg URL. It requires a map parameter with the absolute filename of the Mapserver mapfile. It requests all available layer with a GetCapabilities, requests each layer as an SVG and combines each result into a single SVG document. svgserver builds a layer tree based on the layer names. Layer names are split at dash and underscore characters. Empty layers (with no data in the requested scale or bounding box) are not added to the final SVG.

For example, the following list of layers ist converted to the following layer tree:

roads_highway,roads_minor,buildings,buildings_industrial,labels_roads,labels_places

- map
- roads
    - highway
    - minor
- buildings
    - buildings
    - industrial
- labels
    - roads
    - places

The WMS layers parameter is ignored and all layers that are visible in the requested scale are added (Min/MaxScaleDenominator). The WMS format parameter is always set to image/svg+xml. Make sure your mapfile support this with an OUTPUTFORMAT similar to:

OUTPUTFORMAT
    NAME "svg"
    DRIVER CAIRO/SVG
    MIMETYPE "image/svg+xml"
    IMAGEMODE RGB
    EXTENSION "svg"
END

Installation

svgserver is written in Python and requires Werkzeug. Download the latest release from https://github.com/omniscale/svgserver/releases and install with pip:

pip install svgserver-0.*.tar.gz

Running

You can run svgserver from command line with:

python -m svgserver.main

Call svgserver with --help to see all available command line options.

WSGI

You can serve svgserver as a WSGI application. Here is an example WSGI configuration:

from svgserver.wsgi import create_app

application = create_app({
    'translations_file': 'translations.txt',
    'mapserver_binary': '/usr/local/bin/mapserv',
})

Making requests

You can make regular WMS requests to the /svg URL:

http://127.0.0.1:5000/svg?map=/path/to/mapfile.map&request=GetMap&service=WMS&version=1.1.1&srs=EPSG:3857&BBOX=0,0,100000,100000&width=1000&height=1000"

Instead of providing width and height, you can also provide the desired map scale with the scaledenom parameter:

http://127.0.0.1:5000/svg?map=/path/to/mapfile.map&request=GetMap&service=WMS&version=1.1.1&srs=EPSG:3857&BBOX=0,0,100000,100000&scaledenom=100000

Translations

svgserver can translate layer names to localized, human-readable names. You can privide a translations file with --translations command line option or with the translations_file configuration for WSGI applications.

A translation file is a simple UTF-8 encoded text file with layer=Translation on each line. Empty lines and lines starting with # are ignored. The translations are applied to each part individually (see above how the layer tree is generated).

Example translation file:

map=Stadtplan
boundary=Grenzen
bridges=Brücken
buildings=Gebäude
housenumbers=Hausnummern
labels=Beschriftungen
motorway=Autobahnen