Setting up a MapFish application¶

Creating a MapFish application¶

The MapFish framework provides a command for automatically generating MapFish applications. To create a MapFish application named HelloWorld use:

(venv) $ paster create -t mapfish HelloWorld

Most people would use Mako as the template engine, and SQLAlchemy as the Object Relational Mapper in their MapFish applications. So answer mako (the default) to the first question and True to the second question. To run the command in a non-interactive way you will use:

(venv) $ paster create --no-interactive -t mapfish HelloWorld sqlalchemy=True

The main directories and files in the HelloWorld directory are:

development.ini and test.ini

The application’s main configuration files.

layers.ini

The configuration file where MapFish layers (web services) are configured. The usage of the file will be detailed in a further section (layer.ini) of this documentation.

helloworld

The main application directory, its name depends on the application name you gave as the argument of the paster create command.

Now let’s look at the main application directory (helloworld):

controllers

This directory is where controllers are written. Controllers typically handle HTTP requests, load or save the data from the model, and send back HTTP responses (to the browser).

model

This directory is where the model is defined. More specifically this is where the database objects are defined, using SQLAlchemy.

public

This directory includes the application’s static files, i.e. HTML, images, CSS, JavaScript, etc.

templates

This directory is where (Mako) templates are stored.

tests

This directory is where you can put automated tests for the application.

lib

This directory is where you can put code shared by mutiple controllers, third-party code, etc.

Serving a MapFish application¶

You can use the Paste HTTP server to execute a MapFish application. For example, use the following to make the Paste HTTP server serve the HelloWorld application:

(venv) $ cd HelloWorld
(venv) $ paster serve --reload development.ini

The --reload option make the Paste server monitor all Python modules used by the HelloWorld application and reload itself automatically if any of them is modified. This is useful during development.

By default MapFish (and Pylons) applications are served on port 5000. You can change by editing the development.ini configuration file.

If you visit http://localhost:5000 in your web browser you should see the Welcome to Pylons page.

To stop the Paste server, use Ctrl+C on Unix and Ctrl+D on Windows.