Installation, configuration and ZOO-Kernel use

Introduction

In this section, your goal is to setup the ZOO-Project, have a quick overview of the configirations files used, and get both the ZOO-Project Basic HTML UI and swagger-ui working properly.

Setup the ZOO-Project using Docker

Warning

the following ports should be available on the host where you run the following command: 80, 5432, 8888, 15672 and 5672.

As said in the introduction, you will use the official ZOO-Project Docker Compose environment. To install the ZOO-Project on your local machine, use the following command.

export WS_DIR=~/zoo_ws_ogc
mkdir $WS_DIR
cd $WS_DIR
git clone https://github.com/ZOO-Project/ZOO-Project.git ZPGIT
cd ZPGIT
docker-compose up -d

Access your OGC API - Processes - Part 1: Core landing page. If you follow the link with rel service-doc, you should access the swagger-ui as presented below.

ZOO-Kernel Configuration

General ZOO-Kernel settings are set in the main.cfg file located in the same directory as the ZOO-Kernel, so in /usr/lib/cgi-bin/. This informations will be accessible from each services at runtime, so when you wil use Execute requests. You can see a typical main.cfg content in the following:

Note

we will use ZOO-Kernel or zoo_loader.cgi script without any distinction in this document.

[main]
encoding = utf-8
version = 1.0.0
serverAddress = http://localhost/cgi-bin/zoo_loader.cgi
language = en-US
lang = fr-FR,en-CA,en-US
tmpPath=/tmp/zTmp/
tmpUrl = http://localhost/temp/
dataPath = /usr/com/zoo-project
cacheDir = /tmp/zTmp/
templatesPath = /var/www/
mapserverAddress = http://localhost/cgi-bin/mapserv
msOgcVersion=1.0.0
cors=true
memory=load

[identification]
title = The ZOO-Project OGC WPS Developement Server
abstract = Developement version of ZOO-Project OGC WPS. See http://www.zoo-project.org
fees = None
accessConstraints = none
keywords = WPS,GIS,buffer

[provider]
providerName=ZOO-Project
providerSite=http://www.zoo-project.org
individualName=Gerald FENOY
positionName=Developer
role=Dev
addressDeliveryPoint=1280, avenue des Platanes
addressCity=Lattes
addressAdministrativeArea=False
addressPostalCode=34970
addressCountry=fr
addressElectronicMailAddress=gerald.fenoy@geolabs.fr
phoneVoice=False
phoneFacsimile=False

The main.cfg file contains metadata informations about the identification and provider but also some important settings. The file is composed of various sections, namely [main], [identification] and [provider] per default.

From the [main] section, settings are as follow:

• lang: the supported languages separated by a coma (the first is the default one),

• version: the supported WPS version,

• encoding: the default encoding of WPS Responses,

• serverAddress: the url to access your ZOO-Kernel instance,

• dataPath: the path to store data files (when MapServer support was activated, this directory is used to store mapfiles and data).

• tmpPath: the path to store temporary files (such as ExecuteResponse when storeExecuteResponse was set to true),

• tmpUrl: a url relative to serverAddress to access the temporary file,

• cacheDir: the path to store cached request files [1] (optional),

• mapservAddress: your local MapServer address (optional),

• msOgcVersion: the version for all supported OGC Web Services output [2] (optional),

• cors: accept cross reference,

• memory: this parameter define how the ZOO-Kernel will handle the inputs (set to load in case you want everything to be loaded in memory and ensure to get a value field set ).

Warning

Please make sure that memory is set to load for the JavaScript services you will create in the last section.

The [identification] and [provider] section are specific to OGC metadata and should be set [3].

Obviously, you are free to add new sections to this file if you need more [4]. Nevertheless, you have to know that there is some specific names you should use only for specific purposes: [headers], [mapserver], [env], [lenv], [renv] and [senv].

Warning

[senv], [renv] and [lenv] are used / produced on runtime internaly by the ZOO-Kernel and should be accessed / defined only from the Service code.

The headers section is used to define your own HTTP Response headers. You may take a look at headers returned by web site such as http://www.zoo-project.org by using curl command line tool for instance and notice the specific heder X-Powered-By: Zoo-Project@Trac.

Warning

There is no reason to define basic headers such as Content-Type or encoding as they will be overwritten at runtime by the ZOO-Kernel.

The mapserver section is used to store specific mapserver configuration parameters such as PROJ_LIB and GDAL_DATA or any other you want to be set to make your MapServer working.

Note

the mapserver section is mainly used on WIN32 platform

The env section is used to store specific environment variables you want to be set prior to load your Services Provider and run your Service. A typical example, is when your Service requires to access to a X server running on framebuffer, then you will have to set the DISPLAY environnement variable, in this case you would add DISPLAY=:1 line in your [env] section.

The lenv is used to store runtime informations automatically set by the ZOO-Kernel before running your service and can be accesses / updated from it:

• sid (r): the service unique identifier,

• status (rw): the current progress value (value between 0 and 100, percent),

• cwd (r): the current working directory of the ZOO-Kernel,

• message (rw): an error message when returning SERVICE_FAILED (optional),

• cookie (rw): the cookie your service want to return to the client (for authentication purpose or tracking).

The senv is used to store session informations on the server side. You can then access them automatically from service if the server is requested using a valid cookie (as defined in lenv > cookie). The ZOO-Kernel will store on disk the values set in the senv maps, then load it and dynamically add its content to the one available in the main.cfg. The senv section should contain at least:

• XXX: the session unique identifier where XXX is the name included in the returned cookie.

For instance, if you get the following in your Service source code [5] :

conf["lenv"]["cookie"]="XXX=XXX1000000; path=/"
conf["senv"]={"XXX": "XXX1000000","login": "demoUser"}

That means that the ZOO-Kernel will create a file sess_XXX1000000.cfg in the cacheDir and return the specified cookie to the client. Each time the client will request the ZOO-Kernel using the Cookie, it will automatically load the value stored before running your service. You can then easilly access this informations from your service source code. This functionality won’t be used in the following presentation.

Specific OGC API - Processes configuration file

In addition to the tranditional main.cfg file for global configuration and settings, the ZOO-Project now requires a new configuration file to support the OGC API - Processes - Part 1: Core specification. This file is named oas.cfg and is located in the same directory as the main configuration file you get introcuded to previously.

You can access the dedcated section from the official documentation to see how the endpoints from the exposed API are configured.

To have the ZOO-Project being conformant with Conformance Class HTML, you have to edit the oas.cfg file located in the docker subdirectory you have downloaded when cloning the ZOO-Project GitHub repository. Once, you edit the oas.cfg to set the full_html_support to true, depending on your operating system, you may have to restart the docker-compose environment.

docker-compose down && docket-compose up -d

Conclusion

In this short section, you have learnt how to setup and run the ZOO-Project to be used as an OGC API - Processes - Part 1: Core server implementation and interact with it using the swagger-ui. You also have seen how to modify the two ZOO-Project configuration files.

Footnotes

[1]

when you use GET requests passed through xlink:href the ZOO-Kernel will execute the request only once, the first time you will ask for this ressource and it will store on disk the result. The next time you will need the same feature, the cached file will be used which make your process running faster. If cachedir was not specified in the main.cfg then tmpPath value will be used.

[2]

since version 1.3.0, when MapServer is activated, your service can automatically return a WMS, WFS or WCS request to expose your data. Your can set here the specific version number you want to use to request your local MapServer setup. It depends mostly on the client capability to deal with specific OGC Web Services version.

[3]

since version 1.3.0, when MapServer is activated, the same metadata will be used for setting metadata for OGC Web Services.

[4]

you can take a quick look into the mapmint main.cfg file which is available in /usr/lib/cgi-bin/mm/ directory to have example of sections use.

[5]

If you’re not familiar with ZOO-Project, you can pass this part and come to it after the next section.

[6]

sub-directories listing is available from revision 469.