Developer’s Corner: GeoServer-Manager, super-simple Java client library for GeoServer

Dear All,
we just wanted to spend a few words about a Java library we have just released under the MIT license for talking to the GeoServer REST interface. We have named this library GeoServer-Manager (yeah, a lot of brainstorming behind that name, really…).

Basically the goal of this library is to provide a simple yet usable way to interface a Java application with the GeoServer that would actually ease the work of the developers hiding away from them the relative complexity of the GeoServer REST interface without introducing a complex communication layer.
Here you have some basic facts about the library:
  • minimum set of external dependencies, namely apache-http-common and jdom
  • dead-easy API, see examples here
  • works with GeoServer 2.1 and 2.0.X
  • allows to interact with most common formats:
    • geotiff
    • shapefile
    • postgis
    • mosaic
GeoServer-Manager is open source and licenced under the MIT License. This library draws its essence from the efforts endured inside GeoSolutions in various projects. Partial funding has been provided by FAO.

Our intent is to keep this library lean and mean, therefore we do not intend to add complex stuff like a de/deserializable entity model into it, since we want to use it as a simple yet powerful communication layer with the GeoServer REST interface. However, we have on the radar the possibility to reuse this library in order to build a web service to provide means to interact with the GeoServer internal configuration via other protocols like SOAP or Spring Remoting.

If you have questions or if you just want to talk to us about the using the library in your project, please, subscribe to the mailing list here. In any case, do not hesitate to contact us.

Regards,
the GeoSolutions Team.