Demystifing OGC APIs with GeoServer: introduction and status of implementation (FOSS4G 2022 Edition)

The OGC APIs are a fresh take at doing geo-spatial APIs, based on WEB API concepts and modern formats, including:

Small core with basic functionality, extra functionality provided by extensions
OpenAPI/RESTful based
JSON first, while still allowing to provide data in other formats
No mandate to publish schemas for data
Improved support for data tiles (e.g., vector tiles)
Specialized APIs in addition to general ones (e.g., DAPA vs OGC API - Processes)
Full blown services, building blocks, and ease of extensibility

This presentation will provide an introduction to various OGC APIs and extensions, such as Features, Styles, Maps and Tiles, DAPA, STAC and CQL2 filtering. 
While some have reached a final release, most are in draft: we will discuss their trajectory towards official status, as well as how good the GeoServer implementation is tracking them, and show examples based on the GeoServer HTML representation of the various resources.

Transcript

1. Demystifying OGC APIs
   with GeoServer:
   introduction and
   status of implementation
   Ing. Andrea Aime
   GeoSolutions
   

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2. GeoSolutions
   Enterprise Support
   Services
   Deployment
   Subscription
   Professional
   Training
   Customized
   Solutions
   GeoNode
   • Offices in Italy & US, Global Clients/Team
   • 40+ collaborators, 30+ Engineers
   • Our products
   • Our Offer
   

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3. Affiliations
   We strongly support Open
   Source, it Is in our core
   We actively participate in
   OGC working groups and
   get funded to advance new
   open standards
   We support standards
   critical to GEOINT
   

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4. A bit of history
   

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5. At the beginning, there was WFS3
   • First commit July 31st 2017
   • Developed in the repo for a bunch of months, then
   various public events shaped it into OGC API - Features
   WFS3 Hackaton
   Testbed 14
   Vector Tiles Pilot
   Testbed 15
   API Hackaton
   London
   

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6. API Hackaton, London 2018
   • The same Web API approach as WFS3 is extended to
   other APIs, as well as having a shared core
   API Commons
   Features Coverages Maps & Tiles Processes
   Catalogs Styles More!
   

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7. Periodic OGC API Sprints
   • Since then OGC organized
   periodic code sprints
   • Each sprint focuses on 2-3
   specs and:
   ○ Push forward
   specification drafts
   ○ Implement and gather
   feedback
   ○ Test interoperability
   • GeoSolutions participates
   to push GeoServer API
   implementations forwards
   

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8. Up to 2022: releases and drafts
   • Released:
   ○ OGC API - Features
   ■ Core (Sept 2019)
   ■ CRS by Reference (Oct 2020)
   ○ OGC API - Environmental Data Retrieval (March 2021)
   ○ OGC API - Processes (August 2021)
   • Most APIs and extensions are still in draft stage and
   changing
   

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9. OGC API - Common elements
   

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10. OGC APIs - OpenAPI
    • Fresh take on spatial data
    interoperability
    • Based on OpenAPI/RESTful
    concepts
    • Resource/representation
    • HTTP verbs
    • Small core, a basic service
    can be implemented in a
    matter of days
    • Extensions for every other
    functionality
    

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11. OGC API (OAPI) Common
    • Can be found at:
    https://github.com/opengeospatial/oapi_common
    • Resources:
    • / (landing page)
    • /conformance (conformance classes implemented)
    • For services exposing data:
    • /collections
    • /collection/{collectionId}
    • OpenAPI definition linked from landing page with rel
    service-desc
    

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12. Links, links everywhere!
    • All resources are linked to the others, in the various
    encodings:
    /collections
    /collections/{collectionId}
    Backlinks to self and alternative
    representations
    (different formats/encodings)
    Links to each collection in each of its formats
    {
    "href":"http://data.example.org/collections.json",
    "rel":"self",
    "type":"application/json",
    "title":"this document"
    }
    

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13. Resource representations
    • OAPI Commons recommends:
    ○ HTML for humans and crawlers
    ○ JSON for machine to machine
    • Choose:
    ○ Accept header
    ○ Custom query param (“f” is a common choice)
    

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14. Extensions and conformance
    • Tiny core, bare minimum for a working service
    • Modular extensions for everything else
    • Find what is supported using conformance declaration
    

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15. Features API Core
    

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16. Features API Core
    • In addition to OAPI core:
    • /collection/{collectionId}/items (features)
    • /collection/{collectionId}/items/{itemId}
    • Only supported CRS are
    • CRS84 (WGS84 lon/lat)
    • CRS84h (WGS84 lon/lat/height)
    • Schema not required, features can be anything:
    • Simple
    • Complex
    • Heterogeneous
    • “describeBy” can link to schema (optional)
    

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17. OpenAPI definition
    

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18. /collection/{collectionId}/items
    • Lists the contents of a collection
    • Can be a GeoJSON document, GML, anything
    • Filtering
    • bbox in CRS84 or CRS84h
    • datetime (instant or range of times)
    • extra parameters declared in the API document
    (only by equality, not supported by GS)
    …/collections/buildings/items?
    bbox=41,54,42,55
    &datetime=2018-02-12T23%3A20%3A52Z
    &buildingState=good
    

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19. Paging
    • limit query parameter
    • A limit is always present (like in WFS 1.x and 2.x) but can
    be high
    • Paging works through links, "prev" and "next" rel values
    • Links can be implemented the way you want
    • GeoServer uses offset as an extra paging parameter
    [
    {
    "href":"http://example.org/collections/buildings/items.json?limit:50",
    "rel":"prev",
    "type":"application/geo+json"
    },
    {
    "href":"http://example.org/collections/buildings/items.json?limit:50&offset:50",
    "rel":"self",
    "type":"application/geo+json"
    },
    {
    "href":"http://example.org/collections/buildings/items.json?limit:50&offset:100",
    "rel":"next",
    "type":"application/geo+json"
    }
    ]
    

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20. CORE: that’s all folks!
    • Yes ladies and gentlemen, this is everything
    OGC API - Features - CORE covers
    

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21. Wait wait wait….
    • Look that's nice, but what about….
    

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22. Part 2 - CRS by Reference
    • Support CRS other than CRS84
    • Discover:
    ○ Storage (native) CRS
    ○ Supported target CRS
    • Parameters:
    ○ bbox-crs (query)
    ○ crs (reproject)
    ● Finalized!
    ● GeoServer currently implements older draft
    

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23. Part 3 - Filtering (draft)
    ● Queryables: properties that can be
    used for filtering
    ○ May be a sub-set of the actual
    attributes
    ○ May not even match the attributes
    (e..g, like “anyText” in CSW)
    ● filter: the filter specification
    ● filter-lang: the language used
    ● filter-crs: the CRS for the geometries
    used in the filter
    ● cql2-text, cql2-json
    ● GeoServer supports also ecql-text
    (classic GeoServer extended CQL)
    

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24. CQL2 encodings (draft)
    eo:cloud_cover BETWEEN 0.1 AND 0.2
    AND landsat:wrs_row=28
    AND landsat:wrs_path=203
    {
    "and": [
    { "between": [ {"property": "eo:cloud_cover"}, 0.1, 0.2 ]
    },
    { "=": [{"property": "landsat:wrs_row"},28] },
    { "=": [{"property": "landsat:wrs_path"},203] }
    ]
    }
    &filter-lang=cql2-text
    &filter-lang=cql2-json
    

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25. CQL2 encodings support in GeoServer
    ● Initially it was slightly modified CQL, quite similar
    to ECQL. Supported!
    ● First round of CQL-JSON in Sept 2020
    ● In Sept 2021, CQL2, with significant changes
    ○ cql2-text support landed Feb 2021
    ○ cql2-json parsing March 2022
    ○ cql2-json encoding June 2022
    ● CQL2 is still changing (last change, Aug 2nd 2022)
    

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26. Sorting
    ● Not part (yet) of OGC API - Features
    ● Part of “proposals” not yet turned into draft
    extensions
    ● Borrowed from OGC API - Records
    ● Available in GS 2.22 and 2.21
    /items?sortby=name,-dateOfBirth
    

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27. Property selection
    ● Not part (yet) of OGC API - Features
    ● Not implemented in GeoServer
    ● Part of “proposals” not yet turned into draft
    extensions
    ● returnables, parallel to queryables, list properties
    that can be selected
    ● properties to enumerate wanted properties
    ● skip-geometry to avoid geometry field
    ● STAC API has a different take: fields
    ● Use “-” to remove a property, e.g.
    fields=geometry,-links,-assets&f=json
    

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28. Part 4 - CRUD transactions in draft
    ● Create/Replace/Update/Delete for single feature
    ● Currently in draft
    ● Not currently supported by GeoServer
    .../collections/topp:states/items/states.1
    POST
    PUT DELETE
    PATCH
    

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29. OGC Features API
    GeoServer HTML representations
    

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30. Features API landing page
    DEFAULT TEMPLATES
    FULLY CUSTOMIZABLE
    

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31. Features API /api
    

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32. Collections /collections
    

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33. Collection /collections/{collectionId}
    

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34. Items /collections/{collectionId}/items
    

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35. Coverages
    

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36. OGC APIs - Coverages
    • The simplest WCS ever?
    • Collection as a single coverage
    • GeoServer implementation is currently
    incomplete
    

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37. Coverage and its components
    • DomainSet: spatial and temporal domain
    description
    • RangeType: data structure (bands and types)
    • RangeSet: the actual pixels
    • Metadata: any other info about the coverage
    DomainSet +
    RangeType +
    RangeSet +
    Metadata =
    -----------
    Coverage
    Coverage
    Implementation
    Schema
    (JSON encoding)
    

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38. Coverage extraction
    • Core allows to extract data from a coverage by:
    • bbox
    • datetime
    ...collections/nurc:Img_Sample/coverage?
    f=image%2Fpng&
    bbox=-130,20,-100,40
    

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39. Missing bits
    • The GeoServer implementation lacks the
    following:
    • RangeSet resource
    → describes bands
    • Range subsetting
    → band selection
    • Scaling
    scale-size/scale-factor/scale-axes
    • Coverage tiles
    

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40. Maps
    

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41. Maps API
    • Draft available at
    https://github.com/opengeospatial/ogcapi-maps
    • Building block to produce maps, can be attached to
    collections, but in general, to any resource that can be
    mapped
    • Adds a notion of a “style”, listed in collection metadata
    • Adds a “maps” resource
    • GetFeatureInfo not in core!
    

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42. “map” resource
    • Fetches a map in the requested format
    • Params: width, height, bbox, crs, ….
    • Unlike WMS GetMap, all params are optional
    → similar to the GeoServer WMS reflector
    .../ogc/maps/collections/topp:states/styles/population/map?f=image/png
    

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43. “info” resource (GS specific)
    • Not part of the standard (used to be in a previous draft)
    • Still useful (considers scale deps, filters, symbology)
    • Feature info at given location
    • Params: “i/j” mandatory, others same as “map”
    .../ogc/maps/collections/topp:states/styles/population/map/info?
    f=text/plain&i=50&j=10
    Results for FeatureType 'http://www.openplans.org/topp:states':
    --------------------------------------------
    the_geom = [GEOMETRY (MultiPolygon) with 276 points]
    STATE_NAME = Washington
    STATE_FIPS = 53
    SUB_REGION = Pacific
    STATE_ABBR = WA
    LAND_KM = 172447.205
    WATER_KM = 12226.63
    PERSONS = 4866692.0
    FAMILIES = 1264934.0
    HOUSHOLD = 1872431.0
    MALE = 2413747.0
    FEMALE = 2452945.0
    WORKERS = 1830031.0
    DRVALONE = 1700872.0
    CARPOOL = 282240.0
    PUBTRANS = 104403.0
    EMPLOYED = 2293961.0
    UNEMPLOY = 139216.0
    --------------------------------------------
    

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44. Tiles
    

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45. Tiles API
    • Available at https://github.com/opengeospatial/ogcapi-tiles
    • Still evolving, GeoServer not up to date
    • Adds resources for tiles, tile matrix sets, eventually styles
    • Tiles can be styled or not (e.g. tiling maps or tiling data)
    

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46. Building block, can tile “anything”
    ● /collections/{collectionId} 🡪 data tiles from single
    collection
    ● /collections/{collectionId}/maps 🡪 rendered tiles
    from single map
    ● /collections 🡪 raw tiles from multiple collections (list
    of collections as query param)
    ● /map 🡪 tiles from multi-layer map (list of collections as
    query param)
    ● /add/your/own/here 🡪 if it can be sliced, we'll tile it
    

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47. Tiles resource, URL templates
    ogc/tiles/collections/topp%3Astates/styles/population/map/tiles/
    WebMercatorQuad/{tileMatrix}/{tileRow}/{tileCol}?f=image%2Fpng
    

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48. Tiles “metadata” resource
    ● Extension provided by some implementations
    ● Describes the tiles contents
    ● Can return TileJSON (GeoServer does)
    {
    "tilejson": "2.2.0",
    "name": "topp:states" ,
    "description" : "This is some census data on the states." ,
    "scheme": "xyz",
    "tiles": [
    ".../ogc/tiles/collections/topp%3Astates/tiles/WebMercatorQuad/{z}/{y}/{x}?f=mvt
    ],
    "center": [
    -89.99999997494392 , 42.525564403512014 , 1.0
    ],
    "bounds": [-124.731422 , 24.955967, -66.969849, 49.371735
    ],
    "format": "application/vnd.mapbox-vector-tile" ,
    "minzoom": 0,
    "maxzoom": 24,
    "vector_layers" : [
    {
    "id": "states",
    "description" : "This is some census data on the states." ,
    "fields": {
    "STATE_NAME" : "string",
    "STATE_FIPS" : "string",
    "HOUSHOLD": "number"
    ...
    

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49. Styles
    

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50. Styles API
    • Building block to describe styles for a resource
    • In GeoServer a stand-alone API
    

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51. Style transformation
    • If the server supports it, fetch a style in various encodings
    (GeoServer can do CSS 🡪 SLD, MBStyle 🡪 SLD, YSLD
    🡪🡪 SLD)
    A stylesheet can be marked as “native”
    SLD 1.0
    core
    SLD 1.1
    core
    YSLD
    extension
    MBStyles
    community
    GeoCSS
    extension
    SLD 1.0
    inspired
    object
    model,
    with
    extensions
    

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52. Style metadata
    Basic metadata info
    (yeah, I did not fill it yet, no love lost for metadata!)
    Access to style source, native (CSS)
    and converted (SLD) when possible
    List of layers involved in the style (could have many)
    and attributes used in each (style editor can use them
    to check compatibility with available data)
    The style identifier
    

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53. Styles API client
    • "Visual style editor" as developed by GeoSolutions in
    Testbed 15
    

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54. And more
    

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55. More of APIS!
    • More APIS supported by GeoServer:
    • STAC API
    • DGGS/DAPA (Data Access and Processing API)
    • Images (mosaic management)
    • More APIs NOT supported by GeoServer yet:
    • Records (CSW)
    • Processes (WPS)
    • Routes (WPS specific for routing)
    • Environmental Data Retrieval
    

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56. That’s all folks!
    Questions?
    info@geo-solutions.it
    

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57. That’s all folks!
    Questions?
    info@geo-solutions.it
    

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