Understanding the interface

Accessing the interface just requires you to open the browser and point it at http://localhost:8080/geoserver/web. If you have read the previous chapter and executed the examples, you should have changed the default password for the admin user.

You can use the new one to log in again on GeoServer; we will now focus our attention on the interface's layout.

Consider the following screenshot. You may recognize three main areas in the GeoServer web interface:

The central area shows you some information about the GeoServer status--the elements inside it change according to the operation you are performing. Just after you log on, it shows you a brief detail of the configured data, and warning or errors that you should correct. The last line shows the release number and there is a link to the administrator mailbox; it defaults to a famous ancient geographer until you insert your data.

On the right-hand side, there is a list showing you GeoServer capabilities. The listed acronyms refer to standard OGC protocols; we will talk about some of them in detail in this book, and each of them has at least one release supported. The numbers are links to the XML documents that exactly describe which data and operations each protocol supports. They are very valuable resources for clients willing to use your services.

Try to open the WMS 1.1.1 link and open the result in a text editor. You can easily understand some sections. Consider the following:

• The first one contains a description of the service exposed:

        <Service> 
        <Name>OGC:WMS</Name> 
        <Title>GeoServer Web Map Service</Title> 

• Then you can find some information about the administrator:

       <ContactInformation> 
       <ContactPersonPrimary> 
         <ContactPerson>Stefano Iacovella</ContactPerson> 
         <ContactOrganization>Packt Publishing  
            Ltd.</ContactOrganization> 
       </ContactPersonPrimary> 
       <ContactPosition>Chief geographer</ContactPosition> 

• The list of the supported operations and the base URL for the requests is as follows:

       <Request> 
       <GetCapabilities> 
       <Format>application/vnd.ogc.wms_xml</Format> 
       <DCPType> 
       <HTTP> 
         <Get> 
            <OnlineResource xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
               xlink:type="simple"xlink:href="http://localhost:8080
                 /geoserver/wms?SERVICE=WMS&amp;"/> 
         </Get> 
        <Post> 
          <OnlineResource xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"   
             xlink:type="simple" xlink:href="http://localhost:8080
                /geoserver/wms?SERVICE=WMS&amp;"/> 
        </Post> 
       </HTTP> 
       ... 
       </GetCapabilities> 
       <GetMap> 
        ... 
       </GetMap> 
       <GetFeatureInfo> 
        ... 
       </GetFeatureInfo> 
       <DescribeLayer> 
        ... 
       </DescribeLayer> 
       <GetLegendGraphic> 
        ... 
       </GetLegendGraphic> 
       <GetStyles> 
        ... 
       </GetStyles> 
       </Request> 

This information helps clients understand what kind of requests they can do and the response format they can expect. We will use this information in the rest of the book:

On the left-hand side, there is a table of contents listing the configuration areas. Each area contains links to administrative operations. When you click on one of them, the central area shows you contextual options. We will explore each area in the rest of this chapter.