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# MS RFC 66: Better handling of temporary files

Date

  2011-01-12

Author

  Alan Boudreault (aboudreault at mapgears.com)

Author

  Daniel Morissette (dmorissette at mapgears.com)

Last Edited

  2011-01-12

Status

  Adopted on 2011-01-17

Version

  MapServer 6.0

## Overview

At the moment, we write some temporary files in the web-accessible IMAGEPATH directory, this was a poor practice but still okay for some uses in the past (such as writing CONNECTIONTYPE WMS and WFS responses while we process them), but as our need for temporary files increase, we need to ensure that temp files are handled in a proper and safer way.

This is a proposal for a better handling of the temporary files. The goal is to add the ability to configure the temporary path.

## Proposed Solution

The files will still be written on the disk. The temporary path can be set by the two following ways:

- The environment variable MS_TEMPPATH.

- In the mapfile

    WEB
      TEMPPATH "/tmp/"
    END

If the temporary path is not set, the function will try the standard path depending on the OS. “/tmp/” for Linux/MAC and “C:/temp” for Windows. Most of the work will be to modify the msTmpFile function.

## Purposes of temporary files

- mapcontext.c: Load an OGC Web Map Context format from an URL

- mapgdal.c: msSaveImageGDAL() temporary file… memory support implemented

- mapkmlrenderer.cpp:

  - Merging raster buffer

  - Create icon images

  - Create a zip file with the kml file in it. Using cpl zip api.

- mapogcfilter.c: Save mapfiles after filter applied (debug only)

- mapogcsld.c:

  - Save sld files.

  - Save mapfiles after SLD applied (debug only)

  - Download the symbol referenced by the URL and create a pixmap

- mapogroutput.c:

  - Create zip file (write from query)

  - Create temporary directory (write from query)

- mapscript/php/image.c: Save web images

- mapwfslayer.c: Save gml files

- mapwmslayer.c: Save temporary request output files

## Files affected

- maputil.c: The msTmpFile function.

- All files that call msTmpFile().

## Future enhancement

The default behavior could be changed to write the temporary files in memory. This will only be available if MapServer is built with gdal/cpl, which has a virtual io support. This is more efficient than writing files on disk. The virtual file system interface approach will be based on the RFC 62 CPL Services implementation, which already uses memory files.

This will need the implementation of a few generic functions (or using msIO* functions) to open/read/write/close a file using the CPL functions when available. A memory file can only be handled by the CPL services.

This enhamcement is not a part of the current RFC and will require another RFC.

## Bug ID

The ticket for RFC-66 (containing the implementation) can be found here.

Ticket 3354

## References

RFC 62 CPL Services

Ticket 3570

## Voting history

Adopted on 2011-01-17 with +1 from SteveW, DanielM, FrankW, AssefaY, PericlesN