Chapter 6. Styling Your Layers

In the previous chapters, you learned how to add some data to GeoServer and you worked with maps by exploring Layer Preview. Also, with really simple maps, a fundamental process that GeoServer performs is the rendering of features. This involves assigning a symbol to each feature and applying a set of rules about how features have to be drawn. Choosing a symbol and how it has to be applied is the styling process. Styling is really important in web mapping. A map cannot be rendered without a style associated to the data. When you configured layers, you were using styles bundled with the GeoServer. In this chapter, we will explore what the style documents are and how you can create styles to produce beautiful maps.

We will cover the following points in detail:

• What style contains

• What symbol can be used in GeoServer

• How you can set rendering rules

• How to edit your styles with the GeoServer web interface and external tools

By the end of this chapter, you'll be able...