Server Connections

Before you can publish data with GeoCat Bridge, you will have to configure one or more server connections. This can be achieved in the Servers section of the Bridge dialog:

Adding connections

Click New Server and choose one of the supported server types to create a new server connection:

• GeoServer

• MapServer

• PostGIS

• GeoNetwork

• GeoCat Live

Fill in the required parameters and click the Save button to store the connection details.

You can edit the parameters of a server at any given time. Just select the server connection in the left panel, and edit the fields you wish to change in the right panel.

If you wish to remove a server connection, select it from the left panel and click the Remove button. The Duplicate button may come in handy if you wish to try out an alternative configuration based on an existing server connection.

Bridge will automatically store all server connections in the QGIS settings for later use.

However, sometimes you might want to backup or share all the configured server connections. The Export button will allow you to save a JSON file of the current configuration.

The Import button will do the opposite and load server connections from a JSON file. Note that the imported connections will be added to the list (i.e. no existing connections will be removed). Bridge will append a numeric suffix to server connections with a name that already exists.

Below you can find more info about the different types of services and connections supported by Bridge.

GeoNetwork

Configure a GeoNetwork connection to publish your metadata to an online catalog (CSW).

You can set a (unique) name to identify the connection, the server URL, and the corresponding credentials (user with publish permissions).

The default GeoNetwork node is srv, which will be used if you leave the Node field empty.

Click Test Connection to verify that the connection can be established.

Note

In order to convert the QGIS layer metadata into a format that GeoNetwork understands, Bridge uses the lxml Python library. This library used to be installed by default, but this no longer applies to QGIS 3.22 (LTR) and up, for example.

If Bridge cannot find lxml, it will issue a warning. Therefore, if you wish to publish metadata, please install this missing Python package (e.g. using the OSGeo4W setup or Python’s pip tool).

Users who only have to publish geodata should never have to install this library.

GeoServer

Configure a GeoServer connection to publish your geodata (layers and symbology) as a map service.

When you add a new GeoServer connection, Bridge will automatically add the corresponding WMS and/or WFS endpoints to QGIS, so you can easily add to the server layers to your project, if needed.

You can set a (unique) name to identify the connection, the server URL, and the corresponding credentials (user with publish permissions).

The URL can point to the GeoServer base URL (e.g. http://localhost:8080/geoserver) or the REST API URL (e.g. http://localhost:8080/geoserver/rest). Both URLs will work.

If required, you can create and publish Mapbox styles for vector tiles. Mapbox styles and sprite sheets will be processed after all layers were successfully published to GeoServer.

Click Test Connection to verify that the connection can be established.

You should also specify how layer data will be stored on the server. Three different methods are available:

File-based storage

The layer data is uploaded and stored as files in the GeoServer target workspace on the server.

Bridge prefers to upload vector data as GeoPackages and raster data as GeoTIFF files.

Import into PostGIS database (direct connect)

The layer data is uploaded to tables in a PostGIS database directly (i.e. by Bridge, see PostGIS).

GeoServer will not handle the database upload, but merely establish a link to the database table in the created layer(s). This will require a direct PostGIS connection, which you can set up in the Servers section of Bridge as well (see below).

Note that GeoServer should also have read access to that PostGIS connection.

Import into PostGIS database (handled by GeoServer)

The layer data is uploaded to tables in a PostGIS database by GeoServer. This method requires the GeoServer Importer extension, which only handles Shapefile imports for vector data.

This means that if the data is stored in a GeoPackage originally, attribute names may be renamed due to the 10 character limit of the Shapefile .dbf file upon export. Bridge handles this automatically and also makes sure that field names referenced in styles are renamed accordingly.

You must select a suitable PostGIS datastore on the GeoServer instance. Selecting this option will trigger a process that lists all the available datastores in each GeoServer workspace (which might take some time):

Note

The listed datastores will be prefixed by the workspace name to which they belong.

This does not mean that the layers will be published to that workspace as well.

Bridge always publishes layers to a (new) workspace named after the QGIS project name (see How to publish), but it will use the same datastore connection details as the datastore that you have selected.

If you wish to add a new PostGIS-backed datastore, click the Add datastore button.

This will open a dialog that allows you to specify the connection details. Make sure that GeoServer has full access to the specified PostGIS instance.

For more options (or if you wish to specify a JNDI connection pool) please create the datastore using the GeoServer admin page instead.

Warning

Neither the GeoServer REST API nor the Importer extension is authorized to delete underlying PostGIS layer data tables.

This means that Bridge also won’t be able to clean up these data tables and that each publication will create new tables in the database, adding a numeric suffix to the table name and GeoServer feature type to avoid conflicts. If you (re)publish frequently, this may lead to a lot of redundant tables!

Therefore, we recommend creating a clean-up script on the database side that will remove any “orphaned” tables that were created by GeoServer, but are no longer used by any feature type.

Update August 2022

Starting from Bridge 4.3 and GeoServer 2.21.1, existing PostGIS tables can now actually be overwritten by the Importer extension. This should lead to a much cleaner publication process, as there will be less “orphaned” tables.

However, please be aware that the Importer extension still cannot delete any PostGIS tables: if a workspace is completely removed, this will not delete the underlying feature type tables.

PostGIS

Configure a PostGIS connection if you wish to upload layer data to PostGIS directly. Setting up this connection is required when using the Import into PostGIS database (direct connect) in a GeoServer connection.

Note

JNDI connection pool support is currently unavailable.

MapServer

Configure a MapServer connection to publish your map (layer data and symbology). A MapServer endpoint (Mapfile) is created for each QGIS project.

Under Storage, configure how Bridge should save the MapServer data. Choose Local path to store all files on the local file system. Choose FTP service to transmit the files over FTP to the online MapServer instance. Depending on which option is selected, you will see some additional parameters that must be configured:

GeoCat Live

GeoCat Enterprise users have an additional server connection option to connect to GeoCat Live, the hosted (or on-premise) all-in-one solution for geodata and metadata services.

Click on New Server > GeoCat Live to configure a new Live connection to publish your map (layer data and symbology) and/or metadata. This will show the following form on the right panel:

Under User ID, fill in the name that is used to identify your Live server instances. This often is the same name that is used for the subdomain in the Live server URL, but your server instance might have been configured differently.

Once you filled in the User ID, press the Refresh button to load the available server types from your GeoCat Live instance. This might take a little while. Depending on your Live setup, you will likely see a GeoServer and a GeoNetwork tab after it finished loading:

Now you can configure the available subtypes you wish to use for GeoCat Live.

Please refer to the other server types above (GeoServer, GeoNetwork etc.) for details on how to do this. Note that the name field of the subtypes cannot be changed, as it inherits the GeoCat Live connection name.

Tip

If for some reason you are experiencing difficulties connecting to GeoCat Live, you might try setting up a regular connection (e.g. to GeoServer) if you know the full GeoCat Live server URL.

Proxies & certificates

The GeoNetwork and GeoServer connections mentioned above communicate with the server over HTTP(S) and all their outgoing traffic is handled by the Python requests library. Currently, GeoCat Bridge does not provide a way to set up a proxy server for these connections, and any QGIS proxy settings that may have been defined are ignored. There are plans to add proxy support in future QGIS Bridge releases.

Any QGIS SSL certificate settings are also ignored, which means that Bridge will not be able to connect to servers that use self-signed certificates, for example. However, there is a workaround to this problem. You could set a system environment variable called REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE that points to a .pem certificate bundle. This bundle should include the root certificate and any intermediate certificates that are required to verify the authenticity of the server certificate.