The TEXT/HTML format

One of the ways you can get information from GeoServer about features you click on is by querying WMS with a point and getting a list of surrounding features.

The output format can be anything. The INFO_FORMAT should be text/HTML.

Using the GetFeatureInfo freemarker template

We are going to customize the template for freemarker output. With the following steps, you can have a different layout for information:

1. Go to the OpenLayers demo for topp:states.
2. After the map loads, click on a state. The layer information about that state loads under the map. Consider the following example for clicking on Alabama:

3. Now, examine the URL that was called. The INFO_FORMAT=text/html outputs the feature as an HTML string by default:

        http://localhost:8080/geoserver/topp/wms? 
         REQUEST=GetFeatureInfo&EXCEPTIONS=application/vnd.ogc.
         se_xml&BBOX=-139.848709,18.549282,-51.852562,55.77842&SERVICE=
         WMS&INFO_FORMAT=text/html&QUERY_LAYERS=topp:states...