7.5. Web-based WFS client

The 3D City Database WFS is shipped with a simple web-based client that is mainly meant to test the functionality of the server. The client is automatically installed with the server and is available at the following URL (cf. Section 7.4.1.2 for details):

http[s]://[host][:port]/[context_path]/wfsclient

The screenshot below shows the user interface of the client rendered in a standard web browser.

../_images/wfs_web_client_fig.png

Fig. 7.2 Web-based WFS client.

The user interface consists of two text fields. A user simply enters the XML-encoded operation request that shall be sent to the server into the upper text field named WFS Request [1]. Clicking on the Send button forwards the request to the server. As soon as the response document is received from the WFS server, it is rendered in the lower text field named WFS Result.

Caution

Avoid sending requests through this client that might potentially result in a large number of city objects contained in the response document. Otherwise the available main memory of the web browser is quickly exhausted when trying to display the response document, which renders the browser non-responsive or might even lead to a program crash.

You may want to use the count attribute on the GetFeature request in order to limit the maximum number of features to be contained in the response document. Alternatively, you can specify the “hits” value for the resultType attribute in order to only receive the number of features matching your query instead of the features themselves (cf. Section 7.4.4).