Details of the configuration of Mapbender3

Configuration steps

Following we describe the configuration steps of Mapbender3 a bit further. Configuring your Mapbender3 installation is made up of the following six steps:

  • Creating the database
  • Creating the database schema
  • Copying the bundles’ assets to the public web directory
  • Creating the “root” user
  • Inserting srs parameters (EPSG code definition)
  • Loading the applications of the mapbender.yml to your database

All can be done using the console utility provided by Symfony2, on which Mapbender3 framework is built upon. There’s a mayor caveat though you should understand, before continuing:

The console utility will write files in the app/cache and app/logs directories. These operations are made using the user permissions of whatever user you’re logged in with. This is also true for the app/db directory and the SQLite database within. When you open the application from within the browser, the server PHP process will try to access/write all these files with other permissions. So make sure you give the PHP process write access to these files. See last step below.

Notice: The following steps assume that you are in the directory above the app directory (notice that for git installation that means mapbender3/application/ else mapbender3/).

cd mapbender3/
or for git based installation
cd mapbender3/application

Adapting the configuration file

Database connection parameters are stored together with some more configuration parameters in the file app/config/parameters.yml. This file is using YAML syntax, so be aware that you can not use tabs for indenting. Be careful about this and use whitespaces instead.

Your database configuration in the parameters.yml file could look like this when you use PostgreSQL:

database_driver:   pdo_pgsql
database_host:     localhost
database_port:     5432
database_name:     mapbender3
database_path:
database_user:     postgres
database_password: secret

Creating the database

Symfony2 can attempt to create your database, this works of course only if the configured database user is allowed to. Call the console utility like this:

app/console doctrine:database:create

Creating the database schema

Symfony2 will create the database schema for you:

app/console doctrine:schema:create

Copying the bundles’ assets

Each bundle has it’s own assets - CSS files, JavaScript files, images and more - but these need to be copied into the public web folder:

app/console assets:install web

Alternatively, as a developer, you might want to use the symlink switch on that command to symlink instead of copy. This will make editing assets inside the bundle directories way easier.

app/console assets:install web --symlink --relative

Creating the administrative user

The first user - which has all privileges - must be created using the command:

app/console fom:user:resetroot

This will interactively ask all information needed and create the user in the database.

Alternatively, there is a silent mode you can use, if you want to use a script to install Mapbender3 and don’t want to be asked for all parameters:

app/console fom:user:resetroot --username="root" --password="root" --email="root@example.com" --silent

Inserting srs parameters

Inserting proj4 srs parameters into a database occurs using the command:

app/console doctrine:fixtures:load --fixtures=./mapbender/src/Mapbender/CoreBundle/DataFixtures/ORM/Epsg/ --append

Importing applications from mapbender.yml

Importing applications from mapbender.yml into a database occurs using the command:

app/console doctrine:fixtures:load --fixtures=./mapbender/src/Mapbender/CoreBundle/DataFixtures/ORM/Application/ --append

Configuration files

The basic configuration is done inside the app/config/parameters.yml file. A template is provided in the app/config/parameters.yml.dist file.

app/config/config.yml provides more parameters f.e. to configure portal functionality, owsproxy or provide an additional database.

parameters.yml

  • database: The parameters starting with database are the database connection details.
  • mailer: The mailer settings start with mailer. Use f.e. smtp or sendmail.
  • locale: You can choose a locale for your application (default is en, de is available). Check http://doc.mapbender3.org/en/book/translation.html to find out how to modify translations or how to add a new language.

Notice: You need a mailer for self-registration and reset password functionality.

config.yml

  • fom_user.selfregistration: To enable or disable self-registration of users, change the fom_user.selfregistration parameter. You have to define self_registration_groups, so that self-registered users are added to these groups automatically, when they register. They will get the rights that are assigned to these groups.
  • fom_user.reset_password: In the same way the possibility to reset passwords can be enabled or disabled.
  • framework.session.cookie_httponly: For HTTP-only session cookies, make sure the framework.session.cookie_httponly parameter is set to true.

Notice: You need a mailer for self-registration and reset password functionality (see parameters.yml).

If you use a proxy you have to add the proxy settings to config.yml at section ows_proxy3_core.

This is how the configiration could look like:

ows_proxy3_core:
    logging: true
    obfuscate_client_ip: true
    proxy:
        host: myproxy
        port: 8080
        connecttimeout: 60
        timeout: 90
        noproxy:
            - 192.168.1.123

mapbender.yml

You can configure an applications on two ways. In the mapbender.yml file or with the browser in the Mapbender3 backend.

  • The Mapbender Team provides an up-to-date mapbender.yml with demo applications. New elements with their parameters are added to this configuration in every new version (You can disable the applications by setting published: false or you can empty the mapbender.yml file)
  • applications that are defined in the mapbender.yml are not editable in the backend
  • you can import the applications to the database with the following app/console command
app/console doctrine:fixtures:load --fixtures=./mapbender/src/Mapbender/CoreBundle/DataFixtures/ORM/Application/ --append