React-ing to the need for a modern MapGuide viewer (Part 19): Highlighting selected features

When I was implementing the Selection Panel for mapguide-react-layout, this super-ancient Fusion ticket was on the back of my mind as being able to highlight selected features is a very useful feature to have.

Whereas I didn't really have an idea how this would be done in Fusion, for mapguide-react-layout I had an idea how this would be done.

The trick is to use the v2.6 QUERYMAPFEATURES operation with the following parameters:

• REQUESTDATA=2 (asking for inline selection image only)
• LAYERATTRIBUTEFILTER=0 (so that selection is not constrained by layer selectability and our current view)
• FEATUREFILTER=(the selection XML sub-fragment that represents the selected feature)
• PERSIST=0 (the most important parameter. We want this operation to not alter the selection set)

Once the QUERYMAPFEATURES operation is sent and we get a response, the key is to be able to line up the inline selection image (data URI) with the current map. To handle this part, we use an OL static image source to store the inline selection image.

When all the pieces are brought together, we finally have the ability to highlight selected features.

This will be in the next release of mapguide-react-layout.