A new file chooser for GeoServer

Creating a new shapefile or directory store in GeoServer is nowadays quite easy, you basically just have to specify the path to the file or the directory and GeoServer figures out the rest. However, that still requires you to hand type the path to the file.

I normally don't mind when running GeoServer locally, but it sure gets annoying when GeoServer is deployed on a remote host and a ssh session is needed to pick up the exact paths.
However it's really doing GeoServer workshops that one sees poeople used to desktop software getting out of their comfort zone with this "type a path" thing.

So lately we've been developing a patch adding an interactive file chooser that allows you to pick a file or a directly but simple point and click. Let's have a look:

1. The new shapefile store dialog provides with the "browse" button that will open the file chooser:
   
   
   
2. The file chooser in action, picking up a shapefile:
   
   

   

   
   
3. Choosing a directory of shapefiles instead:
   
   

   
4. The result of picking up the directory. As you can see we've choosen a directory inside of the GeoServer data directory and a relative path has been created (ensuring the data directory configuration remains portable among machines)

If you want a more dynamic display ve've also made a quick screencast (apologies for the low quality of it) that you can download from the GeoSolutions demo server. If you are on Linux you should be able to display the OGG Vorbis format directly, on other platforms you can install VideoLan to play it.

This new functionality will soon land into a GeoServer 2.1.0 near to you :-) .

The GeoSolutions Team,