Upload drawn features layer to geoserver

[Renaud009]

User can now create a custom layer and draw his own features (2d geometry) for future works

• We would like to upload such layer to geoserver so it can be retrieved just like any other layer (and be used as generic WFS wps input)
• We would also like to be able to upload an already generated layer file (by another software): geopackage

A) We need to define layer format: geopackage ?

• Geopackage seems like defacto standard but is kind of overkill for such feature
• Such binary format is not trivial to build in the browser, https://github.com/ngageoint/geopackage-js could help but no example is provided at the moment.
• I think it's possible to add features to an empty geopackage template http://www.geopackage.org/data/empty.gpkg

B) Should geoserver be in charge of writing the geopackage (or other format)?

• Geopackage extension http://docs.geoserver.org/latest/en/user/community/geopkg/
• Client could simply push features as GeoJSON and geoserver handle the file format creation?
• Or such features could be push to a middleware in charge of communicating with multiple geoserver APIs?

C) Could be interesting to be able to load user's geopackage desktop file before uploading it

• Geopackage-js is then a must
• development is needed and we will have to support/maintain both wfs and geopackage for the same kind of feature

D) We need to define what simple routes and data management strategies must be chosen for geoserver

• What we know is that permissions are based on geoserver workspaces. Those workspaces could be shared or not.
• Create datastore (one, many, data type?) -> linked to workspace(s) -> add a layer -> link datastore -> add a style -> publish ? Not sure what all of this really mean.
• Or could multiple layers be in the same geo-package?

@huard @Zeitsperre Ideas are welcome

[Zeitsperre]

Cool! I'll post ideas in a bit.

[huard]

Très chouette ! I'm lacking even a basic understanding of geopackage, so my intuition is not worth much. I understand that native geopackage support in the browser is not a given. If that is so, but geopackage is the leading default format, can we let geoserver handle all geopackage "transactions" ? So uploads would go to geoserver, then back to the client. UI-defined shapes would be sent as simple GML or json format, then converted by geoserver to geopackage. That's what you're proposing right ? Sounds reasonable to me.

[Renaud009]

Not entirely sure it's possible and how to archieve this with geoserver but that's currently the plan. Point C) is a really useless idea (and an overhead of code) but could be an option we want to edit features after the upload by directly modifying the geopackage itself.

[huard]

Sounds like a nice to have for the far future.