Exploring the Web Map Service output formats

Let's look at the URL parameters from the output request to GeoServer's WMS. Consider this output request for the OpenLayers demo. The format parameter is application/openlayers. The format parameter is the key to this chapter, but it's worth going over the other parameters while we're here.

http://localhost:8080/geoserver/topp/wms?service=WMS&version=1.1.0&request=GetMap&layers=topp:states&styles=&bbox=-124.73142200000001,24.955967,-66.969849,49.371735&width=780&height=330&srs=EPSG:4326&format=application/openlayers

The first parameter, service, explains to GeoServer what kind of request you are sending. The value is WMS as we want to retrieve a map.

Several versions exist, so we use the version parameter to specify which WMS dialect we are speaking, 1.1.0 in this example.

The specific request is GetMap. The layer parameter defines which data has to be represented on the map. We can insert a comma-separated list...