Switching coordinate order in OpenLayers 3

In this post we will discuss a small, but quite annoying bug/lack of feature in OpenLayers 3. Working with WFS was never one of the strengths of the library. It offers some base classes, but you have to build a complete program on it, with tons of considerations. On the top of that, you can't easily declare the axis orientation you would like to use with your WFS request. If you have tested your WFS app with the OpenGeo demo services, you may have already bumped into this problem. Maybe, you are reading this post, because you would like to fix the issue. Well, the good news are, you can fix it manually with some JavaScript magic, but the are also some bad news. You can't implement a simple validating system on it, as it is not version specific. From some GeoServers the coordinates in EPSG:4326 come in reverse order, while in others they are perfect with the same WFS version.

Map server basics

If you would like to build your own map server, you have to think it through carefully first. Do you need a complete map server or you can stack with an existing one? Is Google Maps good for you or you need more control on your maps? There are several options on the internet and with some of them, you just have to write a brief JavaScript code and voilà, you have a well-visualized map. In the next few articles I will show some options which won't need an independent map server, but learning at least one of them will be inevitable if you have to build one.

Introduction

Welcome to my web mapping tutorial. In this blog I will build various web mapping schemes on Linux systems. I chose two distributions: Debian and Fedora. This blog will cover the steps of making a working environment for web based WMS and WFS services without attempting to be comprehensive. I am doing this for a study, which of course has a deadline. If I will have some time left on my hands, then I will write about WPS based on GRASS. There will be posts about PostgreSQL and PostGIS, MapServer, GeoServer, Mapnik, Tilemill, OpenLayers, GeoExt, Leaflet and if time permits, Geomajas and tile caching softwares. There will be maximum two posts a week beginning with a partitioning scheme and Apache configuration.