We will use WFS to get vector data encoded in GML. In case you disabled it, as we did in Chapter 11, Tuning GeoServer in a Production Environment, you will need to enable the WFS in GeoServer. Open your command-line console; we will use curl to send requests:
- The first operation that we will use is
GetCapabilities. It describes which feature types and operations are available on the server:
$ curl -XGET "http://localhost/geoserver/wfs?
service=wfs&version=1.0.0&request=GetCapabilities"
-o getCapabilities.xml- The XML returned is quite huge; apart from a standard part describing the WFS service and the supported operation, it contains a description for any
FeatureTypeconfigured on GeoServer. The total length of the file depends on theFeatureTypesnumber. The following lines show you the brief description for aFeatureTypeelement:
<FeatureType>
<Name>Packt:ne_10m_railroads</Name>
<Title>ne_10m_railroads...