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# MapServer OpenLayers Viewer

MapServer provides a simple, built-in method for testing a mapfile using OpenLayers. This feature is for testing/development purposes only, and not for production or deploying full-featured sites. You can preview, test, and navigate a mapfile by accessing a special url which will return a built-in OpenLayers template.

Note

This feature was discussed in rfc 63 and in the ticket https://github.com/mapserver/mapserver/issues/3549

## Using the OpenLayers viewer

### Opening the OpenLayers viewer in your browser

Assuming you are running mapserver on your local machine, and you have the Itasca demo setup, a basic url would be (split into two lines for readability):

    http://localhost/cgi-bin/mapserv?mode=browse&template=openlayers
         &layer=lakespy2&layer=dlgstln2&map=/var/www/workshop/itasca.map

Here is a quick breakdown of that url:

- Basic Parameters for activating the OpenLayers browser:

      template=openlayers
      mode=browse

- Basic Map / Layer Parameters:

      map=/var/www/workshop/itasca.map
      layer=lakespy2
      layer=dlgstln2

That’s it!

### Opening the OpenLayers viewer in the form of a WMS request

This feature is useful when debugging WMS requests. You can write one of these by hand, or copy the URL for a WMS tile. Running the following should give you a simple OpenLayers demo around the BBOX (split into several lines for readability):

    http://localhost/cgi-bin/mapserv?map=/var/www/workshop/itasca.map
         &LAYERS=lakespy2&VERSION=1.1.1&SERVICE=WMS&REQUEST=GetMap
         &FORMAT=application/openlayers&WIDTH=512&HEIGHT=512&SRS=EPSG:26915
         &BBOX=429956.19803725,5231780.0814818,444078.32296225,5245902.2064068

Here is a quick breakdown of the interesting parts of that URL:

- Special Parameter for activating the OpenLayers viewer:

      FORMAT=application/openlayers

- Basic MapServer Parameters:

      map=/var/www/workshop/itasca.map

- Basic WMS parameters:

      #Layers, our bounding box and projection
      LAYERS=lakespy2
      BBOX=429956.19803725,5231780.0814818,444078.32296225,5245902.2064068
      SRS=EPSG:26915

      #Version and other WMS request params
      SERVICE=WMS
      VERSION=1.1.1
      REQUEST=GetMap
      WIDTH=512
      HEIGHT=512
      TRANSPARENT=true

### Customizing settings

- environment variables:

      MS_OPENLAYERS_JS_URL - The URL to the OpenLayers javascript library. Per default the library loaded from the MapServer web server.