GetCapabilities

According to the Open GIS Consortium (OGC) WFS Implementation Specification, a Web feature service must be able to describe its capabilities. Specifically, it must indicate which feature types it can service and what operations are supported on each feature type. The response of a GetCapabilities operation describes WFS's capabilities (OGC WFS Implementation Specification 2002).

The WFS Connector supports GetCapabilities requests issued using only HTTP GET/KVP encoding, although the WFS Implementation Specification also includes support for HTTP POST/XML encoding.

GetCapabilities request parameters

Parameter	Remark
VERSION (M)	Request version number; the WFS Connector supports only WFS version 1.0.0
REQUEST (M)	Name of WFS request type; must be GetCapabilities for a WFS GetCapabilities operation
SERVICE (O)	Service type; must be WFS for a WFS GetCapabilities operation.

Note: Parameters marked M are mandatory, and those marked O are optional.

GetCapabilities example request

The following example uses the SantaClara_WFS service. The HTTP Get method is used to request a GetCapabilities document.

http://<hostname>/wfsconnector/com.esri.wfs.Esrimap/SantaClara_WFS?request=getcapabilities&service=WFS&version=1.0.0

where

<hostname> is the machine name on which the WFS service or test environment has been created.

Response

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<WFS_Capabilities xmlns="http://www.opengis.net/wfs" version="1.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.opengis.net/wfs http://<hostname>/wfsconnector/schema/wfs/1.0.0/WFS-capablities.xsd">

<Service xmlns:ogc="http://www.opengis.net/ogc" xmlns:gml="http://www.opengis.net/gml">
  <Name>ESRI Basic Web Feature Service</Name>
  <Title>ESRI OGC compliant Basic WFS Server</Title>
  <Abstract>This is an OGC compliant MapService. The engine used to serve this MapService is ArcIMS</Abstract>
  <Keywords>ESRI, ArcIMS Feature MapService</Keywords>
  <OnlineResource>http://<localhost>:80/wfsconnector/com.esri.wfs.Esrimap/SantaClara_WFS?</OnlineResource>
  <Fees>none</Fees>
  <AccessConstraints>none</AccessConstraints>
</Service>

<Capability xmlns:ogc=:http://www.opengis.net/ogc" xmlns:gml="http://www/opengis.net/gml">
<Request>
  <GetCapabilities>
    <DCPType>
      <HTTP>
        <Get onlineResource="http://<localhost>:80/wfsconnector/com.esri.wfs.Esrimap/SantaClara_WFS?"/>
      </HTTP>
    </DCPType>
  </GetCapabilities>

  <DescribeFeatureType>
    <SchemaDescriptionLanguage>
      <XMLSCHEMA/>
    </SchemaDescriptionLanguage>
    <DCPType>
      <HTTP>
        <Get onlineResource="http://<localhost>:80/wfsconnector/com.esri.wfs.Esrimap/SantaClara_WFS?"/>
      </HTTP>
    </DCPType>
  </DescribeFeatureType>

  <GetFeature>
    <ResultFormat>
      <GML2/>
    </ResultFormat>
    <DCPType>
      <HTTP>
        <Get onlineResource="http://<localhost>:80/wfsconnector/com.esri.wfs.Esrimap/SantaClara_WFS?"/>
        <Post onlineResource="http://<localhost>:80/wfsconnector/com.esri.wfs.Esrimap/SantaClara_WFS"/>
      </HTTP>
    </DCPType>
  </GetFeature>
</Request>
</Capability>

<FeatureTypeList xmlns:ogc="http://www.opengis.net/ogc" xmlns:gml="http://www.opengis.net/gml">
  <Operations>
    <Query/>
  </Operations>

  [...]

  <FeatureType>
    <Name>4</Name>
    <Title>Feature line class sc)rivers (id=4)</Title>
    <SRS>EPSG:4326</SRS>
    <LatLongBoundingBox minx="-122.202476848347" miny="36.898188029149" maxx="-121.233339972444" maxy="37.484480967195"/>
  </FeatureType>

  [...]

  <FeatureType>
    <Name>6</Name>
    <Title>Feature point class sc_cities (id=6)</Title>
    <SRS>EPSG:4326</SRS>
    <LatLongBoundingBox minx="-122.143890380859" miny="37.0058860778809" maxx="-121.569290161133" maxy="37.441837310791"/>
  </FeatureType>
</FeatureTypeList>

<ogc:Filter_Capabilities xmlns:ogc="http://www.opengis.net/ogc" xmlns:gml="http://www.opengis.net/gml">
  <ogc:Spatial_Capabilities>
    <ogc:Spatial_Operators>
      <ogc:BBOX/>
    </ogc:Spatial_Operators>
  </ogc:Spatial_Capabilities>
  <ogc:Scalar_Capabilities>
    <ogc:Comparison_Operators>
      <ogc:Simple_Comparisons/>
    </ogc:Comparison_Operators>
  </ogc:Scalar_Capabilities>
</ogc:Filter_Capabilities>
</WFS_Capabilities>