MapInfo .TAB file and using GeoServer

[Nick]

I know this is not a GeoServer forum; however, I am interested to know if anyone has had any luck exporting a .TAB file (including style attributes) into GeoServer?  When you use the Universal Translator from TAB -> SHP, no style attributes are copied. 

Is there anyway around this that anyone has already had to resolve?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Warren Vick]

Hello Nick,

 

Unlike TAB, Shapefiles don’t carry any styling information as part of the geometry. So, if using SHP, there’s absolutely no chance of styles being carried through to GeoServer.

 

GeoServer needs its own XML-based style sheets to provide services like WMS. It would be very difficult – perhaps even impossible - to identify general rules that apply to styles based on attributes. There are also significant difference between the styles available on each platform. Therefore I think GeoServer’s TAB import does not even attempt to use built-in styles.

 

In conclusion, I think it’s a case of building styles from scratch in GeoServer. There are many style types that are not in TAB, so you may find your time investment produces even better looking maps.

 

Regards,

Warren Vick

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[Nesh P.]

and do yourself a favour: install CSS Style plugin extension for GeoServer and then create styles. 

[Sancarn]

It would be possible to write some MapBasic to transfer styles to XML SLD style documents

A basic example of how a SLD style is created can be found here:

http://docs.geoserver.org/stable/en/user/styling/sld-introduction.html 

I've never used Geoserver so I wouldn't know how this integrates with the rest of the application but these style sheets seem very functional.

If you absolutely want all point styles from MapInfo into Geoserver it would be as simple as getting them as .png files and using:

   <FeatureTypeStyle>
     <Rule>
       <PointSymbolizer>
         <Graphic>
           <ExternalGraphic>
             <OnlineResource
               xlink:type="simple"
               xlink:href="<<<YOUR FILE>>>.png" />
             <Format>image/png</Format>
           </ExternalGraphic>
           <Size>32</Size>
         </Graphic>
       </PointSymbolizer>
     </Rule>
   </FeatureTypeStyle>

All this of course depends on how confident you are with MapBasic... And how these SLD style files fit into GeoServer. But unfortunately that's where my knowledge dries up.

[Nick]

Thank you for the reply.  The more difficult part is trying to handle the different zoom levels, style changes for lines and polygons, since I am used to only working with the "Workspace Manager" software.

I will do some more research to see if anything can be done to automate it; however, I might have to just use either qGIS or uDig open source GIS software to export the .SLD formats and start from scratch.

I'll try to post the outcome if I can figure anything automated out.

Thanks!

[Greg]

Hi,

Could you use the MapInto 2 QGIS style generator to get the styles into QGIS?

https://github.com/NathanW2/MapInfo-to-QGIS-style-generator/wiki/Using-MapInfo-to-QGIS-style-generator

I've no experience of using it, so can't say how well it works but it might save you some time.

HTH

Greg

[Nick]

Greg - I will give this a shot when I can get back to this project. I got pulled away onto two other projects with higher priority.  

I'm sure we all know how that goes....thanks for the tip. I will respond with what I can figure out.

Thanks!