Announcing: MapGuide Maestro 6.0m10 and a new build of Fusion

This announcement is a double-whammy because they are both somewhat intertwined.

Firstly, we'll start with a new build of Fusion that cleans up several aspects of the viewer framework. These changes in Fusion are slated for inclusion in a future release of MapGuide

New PHP entry point for fusion templates

This new build of Fusion introduces a new PHP entry point for the 5 fusion templates.

Instead of loading say ... the slate template like so:

http://servername/mapguide/fusion/templates/mapguide/slate/index.html

You can now load it like so:

http://servername/mapguide/fusion/templates/mapguide/index.php?template=slate

This entry point supports all the same query string parameters as the original templates but with support for the following additional parameters:

• template (required) - The name of the template to load 
• debug (optional) - If set to 1, the entry point will use fusion.js instead of fusionSF-compressed.js, making the whole debug/development process way more simpler.

The entry point also fetches the application definition and writes it out to the underlying template as JSON, avoiding the need for the initial round trip to fetch this document among other things.


Fixing external base layer support 

The way external base layers are currently supported in Fusion is a bit crufty which this build also addresses:

• Fusion no longer attempts to append script tags to support Google Maps / Bing / OSM / Stamen. The way we do it is unsafe according to modern browsers. That is now the responsibility of the new entry point.
• For Bing / OSM / Stamen, we no longer load external helper scripts at all. This is because such support is already present in OpenLayers itself and the external scripts are merely convenience wrappers that we can easily implement ourselves in Fusion.
• Finally, XYZ layers are now properly supported in Fusion. This means you can do things like consuming OSM tiles from your own OSM tile server, or maybe use non-watermarked CycleMap/TransportMap layers, or you can finally be able to consume your own MapGuide XYZ Tile Set Definitions.

Now the reason this announcement is a double-header is because these changes in Fusion really needs tooling assistance to best take advantage of these changes, so here's also a new release of MapGuide Maestro as well. Here's the notable changes.

Fusion XYZ layer editor support

Now that we have proper XYZ tile layer support in Fusion we now have support for consuming external XYZ tile sets.

 
Because MapGuide XYZ Tile Sets Definitions can now be consumable with Fusion, you can specify a tile set URL for such a Tile Set Definition by clicking the new Add from XYZ Tile Set Definition toolbar button.

If you want to consume OSM tiles from your own OSM tile server you can use this editor and point it to your OSM tile server with the requisite ${x}, ${y} and ${z} placeholders.

RtMapInspector tool improvements 

The other major feature of this new release is improvements to the RtMapInspector.

For a refresher, the RtMapInspector tool was introduced way back in a beta release of Maestro 5.0 and the purpose of this tool was to easily inspect the state of any runtime map if you know its session id and map name so you can easily debug map manipulation and state updates. Did your MapGuide application code correctly added your new layer? You can use this tool to inspect the map state and find out.

Having looked at this tool more recently, I've come to realise that I'm only skimming the surface of what this tool is capable of and with this release, the capabilities have been significantly expanded.

For example, the tool now lets you see the map image for the current map state

But it also occurred to me if we're inspecting a map, we can (and should be able to) also inspect its layers (and their feature sources) too! So when you select any layer in this tool, a new Inspect Layer button is enabled.

Clicking it will bring up an inspection dialog that shows the layer's XML and be able to interact with its feature source using the same components as the local feature source preview.

Other Changes

• Now requires .net Framework 4.7.1. The windows installer will check for this (and install if required)
• Maestro API now uses the latest stable releases of NetTopologySuite and GeoAPI
• The MgTileSeeder tool now targets .net Core 2.1

Download MapGuide Maestro
Download test build of Fusion