Feature types

A feature type is a vector based spatial resource or data set that originates from a data store. In some cases, such as with a shapefile, a feature type has a one-to-one relationship with its data store. In other cases, such as PostGIS, the relationship of feature type to data store is many-to-one, feature types corresponding to a table in the database.

/workspaces/<ws>/datastores/<ds>/featuretypes[.<format>]

Controls all feature types in a given data store / workspace.

Method

Action

Status code

Formats

Default Format

Parameters

GET

List all feature types in data store ds

200

HTML, XML, JSON

HTML

list

POST

Create a new feature type, see note below

201 with Location header

XML, JSON

PUT

405

DELETE

405

Note

When creating a new feature type via POST, if no underlying dataset with the specified name exists an attempt will be made to create it. This will work only in cases where the underlying data format supports the creation of new types (such as a database). When creating a feature type in this manner the client should include all attribute information in the feature type representation.

Exceptions

Exception

Status code

GET for a feature type that does not exist

404

PUT that changes name of feature type

403

PUT that changes data store of feature type

403

Parameters

list

The list parameter is used to control the category of feature types that are returned. It can take one of the following values:

  • configured—Only configured feature types are returned. This is the default value.

  • available—Only feature types that haven’t been configured but are available from the specified data store will be returned.

  • available_with_geom—Same as available but only includes feature types that have a geometry attribute.

  • all—The union of configured and available.

/workspaces/<ws>/datastores/<ds>/featuretypes/<ft>[.<format>]

Controls a particular feature type in a given data store and workspace.

Method

Action

Status code

Formats

Default Format

Parameters

GET

Return feature type ft

200

HTML, XML, JSON

HTML

quietOnNotFound

POST

405

PUT

Modify feature type ft

200

XML,JSON

recalculate

DELETE

Delete feature type ft

200

recurse

Exceptions

Exception

Status code

GET for a feature type that does not exist

404

PUT that changes name of feature type

403

PUT that changes data store of feature type

403

Parameters

recurse

The recurse parameter recursively deletes all layers referenced by the specified featuretype. Allowed values for this parameter are “true” or “false”. The default value is “false”. A DELETE request with recurse=false will fail if any layers reference the featuretype.

recalculate

The recalculate parameter specifies whether to recalculate any bounding boxes for a feature type. Some properties of feature types are automatically recalculated when necessary. In particular, the native bounding box is recalculated when the projection or projection policy are changed, and the lat/long bounding box is recalculated when the native bounding box is recalculated, or when a new native bounding box is explicitly provided in the request. (The native and lat/long bounding boxes are not automatically recalculated when they are explicitly included in the request.) In addition, the client may explicitly request a fixed set of fields to calculate, by including a comma-separated list of their names in the recalculate parameter. For example:

  • recalculate= (empty parameter): Do not calculate any fields, regardless of the projection, projection policy, etc. This might be useful to avoid slow recalculation when operating against large datasets.

  • recalculate=nativebbox: Recalculate the native bounding box, but do not recalculate the lat/long bounding box.

  • recalculate=nativebbox,latlonbbox: Recalculate both the native bounding box and the lat/long bounding box.

Projection Policy

When specifying the Projection Policy in a FeatureType defined in the request body, the internal name should be used instead of the one available on the UI. The following table shows the correspondence between display and internal names:

Display Name

Internal Name

Force declared

FORCE_DECLARED

Keep native

NONE

Reproject native to declared

REPROJECT_TO_DECLARED

quietOnNotFound

The quietOnNotFound parameter avoids to log an Exception when the feature type is not present. Note that 404 status code will be returned anyway.

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