Combining Drupal Content Management System with OGC Web Services

(1)

Combining Drupal Content

Management System with

OGC Web Services

By

Terefe Hanchiso Sodango (Haramaya

University, Ethiopia)

Dr. U.D. (Ulanbek) Turdukulov &

Drs. B.J. (Barend) Köbben(University

of Twente, the Netherlands)

Presentation for AfricaGIS 2013 + GSDI 14

Conference, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

(2)

Following the recent developments in

web technology, Geographic Information

Systems are becoming increasingly web

services oriented. OGC Web Services

are the essential elements of web GIS.

The two main and widely used are WMS

and WFS.

(3)

Obviously as there is a need to share

these services on the web, there may be

also a need to make systems safe and

secured from unauthorized use.

Part of the solution is applying different

roles, privileges and permission levels to

users in order to make the services be

accessible and consumable by authorized

users only.

Presentation for AfricaGIS 2013 + GSDI 14 Conference,

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

(4)

Content Management System is a suitable

tool to implement the aforementioned

functionality.

This study aims at finding the suitable Drupal

software stacks for implementing OGC Web

Services and access control. Drupal CMS is

proposed because it is free, extensible and

has a lot of powerful modules for the

(5)

Various geospatial modules were

combined with Drupal CMS for the

implementation of WMS, WFS,

WFS-T and access control.

Presentation for AfricaGIS 2013 + GSDI 14 Conference, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

(6)

Some of the tested modules were:

Mapping Kit, OpenLayers, Nicemap,

Mapbox, MapServer, Mapstraction,

OpenLayers KML Layer, Umapper,

WMS, WFS, Content Access, Access

Control List (ACL), Field Permission

and others.

(7)

Among these, Mapping Kit and

OpenLayers were selected for further

investigation and implementation in

Drupal-6.26 environment. These two

modules were selected over others

due to their suitability for OGC

compliant Web Services (WMS, WFS

and WFS-T).

(8)

● On the other hand, Content Access,

Access Control Lists and Field

Permission modules were selected

for access control.

● A number of other modules which

(9)

● To impose the RBAC (Role Based

Access Control) on entities (WMS,

WFS, WFS-T) three arbitrary

additional roles namely: Planner,

Resident and Public were created.

(10)

● The roles were assigned with

different permission levels in the

system based on a usecase

scenario assumed by the author.

Every Drupal node consisting of

WMS, WFS or WFS-T services

was set RBAC.

(11)

● For each role, user accounts were

created to test functionality of

access control.

● Generally, in this study Drupal

stacks which is suitable for serving

OGC compliant Web Services and

applying access control is selected

and implemented.

(12)



 

GIS is becoming Web Service oriented.



 

OWS are the essential elements of web GIS.



 

Since 1994, the OGC issues consensus

standards.



 

The OGC has defined standards for Web Map

Service (WMS), Web Feature Service (WFS),

Web Catalogue Service (CS-W)…etc.



 

Two common are WMS and WFS



 

Use interface with a common GetCapabilities

operation and use simple HTTP

(13)

OBJECTIVES

Main Objective:



 

To find suitable Drupal

stacks for

implementation of OGC web services.

Specific Objectives:



 

To find suitable Drupal

stacks for

implementation of OGC web services.and

apply role based access control on the

services (WMS, WFS and WFS-T).

Introduction continued

(14)



 

OS CMSs can provide security (effective for

protection of data).



 

Drupal is a free web-based CMS.



 

It provides frameworks of modular interface.



 

Drupal website is stored and treated as

nodes

Content Type

Node Node

V

i

e

w

s

Page

Block

Node

(15)

1

5 

 

Flexibility, robustness, scalability, security

and large support base make Drupal

popular CMS



 

It has more than 7,004 modules

CMS and OGC Web Services

(16)

Assessment of Some Drupal Modules

 

Core modules

:

are used to offer basic

functionalities

 

Content Construction Kit (CCK)

:Create new

content types and extend existing

 

Chaos tool suite:

Panels and Views

 

OpenLayers Module:

powerful JavaScript library

 

Mapping Kit:

It has a collection of modules which

support mapping and allow adding geographic

capabilities to Drupal.

(17)

Mapbox:

Provides “maki” styled map layers to

OpenLayers.

Nicemap:

Nicemap is a WMS client for Drupal. It is used

to access publicly available NASA’s WMS server.

Geo Module:

This module is used to provide a storage

engine and API for geospatial data.

Views Module:

It is a framework for other modules. It

enables users to make lists, tables, maps and other

outputs of database queries

Content Access Module:

Allows managing permission

for content types by role.

(18)

Drupal-6.26

MapServer

Web Client, OpenLayers

WMS

WFS

File System [vector or

raster] (ESRI shape files…

etc)

Geo-Database

Postgresql/PostGIS

C

lie

n

t

ap

p

lic

ati

o

n

Apache

Web Server

Direct Access

(WFS-T)

Se

re

ve

rs

In

te

rfa

ce

s

b

as

es

IMPLEMENTATION

System Architecture

(19)

System Components tested in Drupal 6.26

version

(20)

Mapping Kit Module

Mapping Kit is able to serve WMS from the MapServer

application through OGC Get-Capabilities and GetMap

requests.

E.g.

Service: http://itcnt07.itc.nl/cgi-bin/mapserv.exe?map=//

itcnt03/Students/sodango27912/www/enschede/

1.map&SERVICE=WMS&REQUEST=GetMap&Layers=neb

ourhood,streets,schools&SRS=EPSG:28992&

Layers: nebourhood,streets,schools

Projection: EPSG:28992

(21)

The resulting map of the GetMap

Request

(22)

Mapcontext

: Used to

provide extent, projection,

and the layers to include

(23)

The resulting map of the request

(24)

“[map width="600" height="300" layers="1, 2, 3" 1="

http://

itcnt07.itc.nl/cgi-bin/mapserv.exe?

map=//sites/default/files/maps/

enschede/

1.map&|EnschedeNeighbourhood|nebourhood" 2="wms|http://

localhost/cgi-bin/mapserv.exe?map//sites/default/files/maps/

enschede/1.map&|Enschede Existing

Schools|schools" 3="

WMS

| http://itcnt07.itc.nl/cgi-bin/mapserv.exe?

map=//sites/default/files/maps/

enschede/1.map&|Enschede Risk Points|riskpts"

maxextent="246000,464000,265700,479000" class=

"align-left" style="border: 2px solid red;" projection="EPSG:28992"/]”

(25)

The resulting map of the inline map code

(26)

Inline map mixed with text class=”align-left” and

class=”align-right”

(27)

WFS request

(28)

“[map context="node/80/Enschede Schools"

controls="default,statusbar,layerswitcher" layers="1" 1="

http://itcnt07.itc.nl/cgi-bin/mapserv.exe?map=//sites/

default/files/maps/enschede/1.map&|Ensch

ede Schools|Schools|maxfeatures=64, extract=true,

styleMap= {strokeColor: blue,strokeWidth:5,stroke

Opacity: 0.5,fillOpacity:0.5}width="600" height="300" /]”

(29)

(30)

Role Based Access Control (RBAC)

set on (WMS, WFS and

WFS-T)

(31)

Access Control is applied on Drupal Entities

(32)

(33)

Users with Public Role

(34)

(35)

Users with Resident Role

(36)

User with “Resident” role can view but

(37)

Users with Planner Role

(38)

(39)

Planner Can WFS-T Features

(40)

(41)

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

Conclusion



 

Mapping Kit and OpenLayers are more

suitable for serving OGC compliant Web

Services.



 

RBAC is applied on OGC Web Services

to restrict unauthorized access.

(42)

• The geospatial and content access modules

used were effective and able to perform the

proposed functionality. Therefore, the

suitable

stack

is composed of



 

Drupal-6.x,



 

Mapping Kit,



 

OpenLayers,



 

Access Control List,



 

Content Access and

(43)

Mapping Kit and Openlayers modules are

recommended for their suitability of serving OGC

compliant WMS, WFS and WFS-T.

On the other hand to impose access control:

 

Access Control List,

 

Content Access and

 

Field Permission modules are suitable.

Recommendation

(44)

• Especially, Mapping Kit has many

sub-modules which can provide varieties of

mapping services.



 

easy customization of maps



 

It allows maps to be added to contents



 

It has sub-modules which are useful to

add content types for mapping.



 

It doesn’t require Views module for

displaying



 

It has relatively good documentation

(45)



 

Mapping Kit module is not yet developed for

Drupal-7.x, therefore, users opting to use

Drupal-7.x can consider another approaches too.



 

For example “

Cartaro

” is another stack which can

give OGC compliant Web Services in Drupal 7.x.

Recommendation continued

(46)

Thank You Very

Much!

(47)

Presentation for AfricaGIS 2013 + GSDI 14

Conference, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Presentation for AfricaGIS 2013 + GSDI 14

Conference, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia