Book Image

GeoServer Beginner's Guide

Book Image

GeoServer Beginner's Guide

Overview of this book

GeoServer is an open source server-side software written in Java that allows users to share and edit geospatial data. Designed for interoperability, it publishes data from any major spatial data source using open standards. GeoServer allows you to display your spatial information to the world. Implementing the Web Map Service (WMS) standard, GeoServer can create maps in a variety of output formats. OpenLayers, a free mapping library, is integrated into GeoServer, making map generation quick and easy. GeoServer is built on Geotools, an open source Java GIS toolkit.GeoServer Beginner's Guide gives you a kick start to build custom maps using your data without the need for costly commercial software licenses and restrictions. Even if you do not have prior GIS knowledge, you will be able to make interactive maps after reading this book.You will install GeoServer, access your data from a database, style points, lines, polygons, and labels to impress site visitors with real-time maps.Follow along through a step-by-step guide that installs GeoServer in minutes. Explore the web-based administrative interface to connect to backend data stores such as MySQL, PostGIS, MSSQL, and Oracle. Display your data on web-based interactive maps, style lines, points, polygons, and embed images to visualize this data for your web visitors. Walk away from this book with a working application ready for production.After reading the GeoServer Beginner's Guide, you will have beautiful, custom maps on your website built using your geospatial data.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
GeoServer Beginner's Guide
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Time for action – loading data in PostGIS and publishing them in GeoServer


Now that you have a functioning instance of PostGIS, it's time to load some data. We will keep the same census data used for shapefiles and turn them into a PostGIS spatial table.

  1. Start the PostGIS Shapefile Import/Export Manager, an easy tool installed along with PostGIS. Click on the View Connection details button and insert the parameters needed to connect to PostGIS:

  2. Now, click on the Add File button and browse to the shapefile containing Tiger 2011 county census data. The tool doesn't recognize the SRS contained in the prj file. Set the value of the field to 4269:

  3. Click on the Import button and set the encoding to LATIN1 as DBF file character encoding:

  4. Wait while the loader transforms your data and inserts them into a new PostGIS table. Eventually, you should see a success message in the log textbox. Click on Cancel to dismiss the loader utility:

  5. Now open the administration interface, go to the Data | Stores section...