How to select fields returned by GeoServer WMS GetFeatureInfo request?

Question

I'm running simple local mapping service based on PostGIS/GeoServer/OpenLayers stack.

Following opengeo tutorial I've tied click events in OpenLayers to WMS GetFeatureInfo call using:

    map.events.register('click', map, function (e) {
        var url = "http://localhost:1979/geoserver/wms" 
          + "?REQUEST=GetFeatureInfo"
          + "&EXCEPTIONS=application/vnd.ogc.se_xml"
          + "&BBOX=" + map.getExtent().toBBOX()
          + "&X=" + e.xy.x
          + "&Y=" + e.xy.y
          + "&INFO_FORMAT=text/html"
          + "&QUERY_LAYERS=MYDATA:MYLAYER"
          + "&LAYERS=MYDATA:MYLAYER"
          + "&FEATURE_COUNT=5"
          + "&SRS=EPSG:3857"
          + "&STYLES="
          + "&WIDTH=" + map.size.w
          + "&HEIGHT=" + map.size.h;
        window.open(url,
          "getfeatureinfo",
          "location=0,status=0,scrollbars=1,width=800,height=125"
        );
      });

I've used GeoServer's FreeMarker templates to format the response correctly. The problem I have is that the response I get returns all of the fields from the layer.

Is there a way to select the ones that are relevant to the user?

Answer 1

Doesn't look good (source):

... GetFeatureInfo [...] is a WMS request and WFS. [...] One difference in their behaviour is that Geoserver sends always all the attributes with GetFeatureInfo but with WFS the list of attributes can be given in the request.

You could create a view that contains only the attributes your user wants to/should see and serve that through Geoserver.

An alternative would be to adjust die GetFeatureInfo template.

Answer 2

Just don't include the fields you don't want in your freemarker template. See http://docs.geoserver.org/trunk/en/user/tutorials/GetFeatureInfo/index.html#custom-templates

Answer 3

You can do this using the GeoServer propertyName WMS request parameter:

http://docs.geoserver.org/stable/en/user/services/wms/vendor.html#propertyname

Answer 4

You can add conditional statements to freemarker templates.

For example in your content.ftl file you can add something like this to only list "YOUR_FIELDNAME".

<#if attribute.name == "YOUR_FIELDNAME">
     <li>${attribute.name}: ${attribute.value}</li>
</#if>

Alternatively you can exclude a field by doing this:

<#if !attribute.name == "YOUR_FIELDNAME">
     <li>${attribute.name}: ${attribute.value}</li>
</#if>

Answer 5

What about this?

Also, for this to return attributes (and not just the layer name and feature id) you have to add "ows_include_items" "attribute1, attribute2, ..., attributeN" or "ows_include_items" "all" to the metadata section of your WMS layer's map file entry.

From : http://trac.osgeo.org/openlayers/wiki/GetFeatureInfo