Announcing: MapGuide Maestro 6.0m7

So you've downloaded the new build of Fusion for your respective version of MapGuide Open Source so you can use the current iteration of Bing Maps as the v6/v7 versions of Bing Maps that Fusion was using will be shut down hours after this post is published.

But this iteration of Bing Maps now requires an API key to use it. So you sign up for an API key in the bing maps portal. Now where you do put this thing?

Well, here's a new release of MapGuide Maestro to help you with this very task among some new features and fixes.

Updated Fusion editor for Bing Maps

The fusion editor has been updated to work against the current iteration of Bing Maps. It has a new field for you to put your Bing Maps API key

When you put in the key and clicked Set API key it will write the API key into the top-level BingMapKey extension element of the Application Definition XML.

Also the available bing layer list has been updated to match what the current iteration provides.

The only difference is that the base layer formerly known as the "Hybrid" base layer has been renamed to "AerialsWithLabels". So if you use the bing hybrid layer you need to replace it with AerialsWithLabels.

This release of Maestro also includes new validation rules for Application Definitions to catch these new Bing Maps issues.

Auto-Configured Spatial Contexts in WMS Configuration Documents

In my adventures of consuming WMS services in MapGuide and building the initial WMS configuration document, I've been consistently observing a pattern like this:

The pattern being, that the names of the discovered spatial contexts usually follow the pattern of "EPSG:XXXX", yet we had to then go and manually fill in the correct coordinate systems one by one, even though the EPSG code is right there in the name!

With this release, we now automatically infer and fill in such coordinate systems for you

Other Changes

• Fixed inability to preview maps using the local viewer if the map uses a transparent background color
• Refine the error message when attempting to calculate meters-per-unit in MgCooker and you have no map or tile set selected. Selected is a misnomer, you have to actually check the respective tree node, and the error message has been updated to reflect that.
• Package updates to DockPanelSuite and Newtonsoft.Json

Download

Using Bing Maps? Here's some new builds of Fusion.

I gave out the warning last month, and just in time before Microsoft pulls the plug on the Bing Maps legacy controls and services on June 30th 2017, here's some new builds of Fusion with support for the current iteration of Bing Maps.

The current iteration of Bing Maps now requires an API key, so if you don't have one you can signup for one at the bing maps portal.

I don't normally put out releases of Fusion like this. I'd normally would just roll it into a new point release of MapGuide Open Source, but I'm currently not in a suitable position at the moment to put out new builds of MapGuide, so this will have to suffice.

Download Fusion for your particular version of MapGuide here:

Fusion for MGOS 2.6

Fusion for MGOS 3.0

Fusion for MGOS 3.1

To install, just extract the zip file contents to the www directory of your MapGuide installation. Be sure to back up or remove the existing fusion directory before doing this.

Now, having not put out a new release of MapGuide for a while, there are also plenty of fixes and minor enhancements made to these respective branches of Fusion since the version bundled with their respective released version of MapGuide. You can check out the changelogs for these respective branches here:

Fusion for MGOS 2.6 Changelog

Fusion for MGOS 3.0 Changelog

Fusion for MGOS 3.1 Changelog

So you've got your Bing Maps API key, where in the Application Definition do you put this key in?

Maybe you want to check out the next post.

Announcing: mapguide-react-layout 0.9.1

This is a small bug fix release that brings updates to key libraries we use:

• React 15.6.1
• Blueprint 1.21
• OpenLayers 4.2.0

And includes the following fixes:

• The MAP_REFRESH redux action now properly rebuilds the legend with the latest layer/group state. 
• Fixed the feature tooltip to not send queries if the mouse pointer is currently inside tooltip content. If you have things like tooltips with interactive content, you will find the content to "stick around" better in this release.

This release also has one small enhancement, the viewer now supports a mount option for specifying initial visibility of template elements (Legend, Task Pane, Selection Panel). Currently this will have the most impact when used with the Aqua and Sidebar viewer templates.

For other viewer templates, this new feature won't have much effect yet. For example, take the Slate template.

The very design of this template means that if you wanted all Legend/TaskPane/SelectionPanel to be hidden initially, you just cannot do it. Because they all reside in an accordion, one of these elements has to be visible. The original Fusion templates (at least slate from my memory) could conceivably have Legend/TaskPane/SelectionPanel all hidden because its sidebar was collapsible. That is not the case in this iteration of Slate (and the other ported templates with a sidebar). Having collapsible sidebars in these viewer templates will be a problem a future release will be fixing.

Finally, one thing that was actually possible in the 0.9 release, but I didn't really mention because I wanted to make sure this feature was working before actually announcing it is that Script Commands which is the InvokeScript replacement in mapguide-react-layout can be used with the standard viewer bundle. You no longer need to exclusively use the npm module to have support for Script Commands.

You can see an example of script command registration using the standard viewer bundle here.

Project Home Page

Download

mapguide-react-layout on npm

Look ma, no tooltip requests!

So what does tiles of ascii-like content give us?

UTFGrid tiles allows us to pre-render tooltip interaction data. Because we're pre-rendering such data, no mapagent requests are ever made, we can fetch for such tiles just like other map image tiles.

If you remember my previous notes about MapGuide scalability, session repositories add memory and administrative burden/bookkeeping to the running MapGuide Server. If you can get away with not having to create a session repository and keeping it alive, you should. Currently, tooltip requests sadly, require a runtime map (thus, requiring a session be created first and the initial runtime map state to be saved to its session repository).

Because this is pre-rendered tiles of interaction data, paired with map image tiles, it's a very scalable map viewing solution. No CREATERUNTIMEMAP operation was needed to demonstrate this example, nor did we have to create or hit any session-based resources.

Also, because UTFGrids are accessed using the same XYZ tile access scheme, we can re-use the XYZ tile provider in the Tile Set Definition and just specify the new TileFormat of UTFGRID

Accessing UTFGrid tiles is just like accessing XYZ tiles, via the GETTILEIMAGE mapagent operation, but using the UTFGrid Tile Set Definition as the resource id.

The usual mapping suspects of OpenLayers and Leaflet already support UTFGrids, so you can easily take advantage of UTFGrids when it finally lands in MapGuide proper.

Now to make sure UTFGrid support also works on our Linux builds before I draft up that RFC.