QGIS mapserver test drive

by filed under GIS, Linux, QGIS, Tech, WebGis.

QGIS recently added new WMS server capabilities to its software stack. Breaking into the server world, the new server can read a QGIS project project file and serve maps to the internet. This amazing new feature, really brings QGIS users to a new set of possibilities.

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Today I found some time to test some new amazing QGIS features. One of the most interesting additions is the WMS integrated server. I usually test all new projects in my user directory, I created a folder ‘~/public_html/qgis-client/’ to host this test. Next step was to enable CGI handling, since I run apache under Linux and all I had to do was to create a file named ‘.htaccess’ in the ‘~/public_html’ folder: 
AddHandler cgi-script .fcgi .cgi
Options +ExecCGI
SetEnv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /home/myuser/app/lib
This few lines, enable CGI and add a search path to the library loader, this was necessary for the handler to load my QGIS trunk build, located in ‘~/app/’. Now I needed to symlink the qgis-mapserv.fcgi executable into the project folder: 
cd ~/public_html/qgis-client/
ln -s ~/app/bin/qgis_mapserv.fcgi .
~/app/bin/wms_metadata.xml .
vim ~/app/bin/wms_metadata.xml
The last command allows the customization of the GetCapabilities response. I was now able to serve a qgis project with the WMS protocol, the project location can be specified with the map parameter, like this: 
http://localhost/~myuser/qgis-client/qgis_mapserv.fcgi?map=/home/ale/public_html/qgis-client/qgis-client.qgs