Structure of the Data Directory¶

Introduction¶

The structure of the data directory at this point is likely only of interest to core developers. Previously users would often modify their data directory directly to programmatically make changes to their GeoServer configuration. The new route to do this is with the RESTful Configuration API, and is the only recommended option.

The following figure shows the structure of a GeoServer data directory:

data_directory/
   global.xml
   logging.xml
   wms.xml
   wfs.xml
   wcs.xml
   data/
   demo/
   geosearch/
   gwc/
   layergroups/
   palettes/
   plugIns/
   security/
   styles/
   templates/
   user_projections/
   workspaces
   www/

The .xml files¶

The top level xml files save the information about the services and various global options.

workspaces¶

The various workspaces directories contain metadata about “layers” which are published by GeoServer. Each layer will have a layer.xml file associated with it, as well as either a coverage.xml or a featuretype.xml file depending on whether it’s a raster or vector .

data¶

Not to the confused with the “GeoServer data directory” itself, the data directory is a location where actual data can be stored. This directory is commonly used to store shapefiles and raster files but can be used for any data that is file based.

The main benefit of storing data files inside of the data directory is portability. Consider a shapefile located external to the data directory at a location C:\gis_data\foo.shp. The datastore entry in catalog.xml for this shapefile would like the following:

<datastore id="foo_shapefile">
   <connectionParams>
     <parameter name="url" value="file://C:/gis_data/foo.shp" />
   </connectionParams>
 </datastore>

Now consider trying to port this data directory to another host running GeoServer. The problem exists in that the location C:\gis_data\foo.shp probably does not exist on the second host. So either the file must be copied to the new host, or catalog.xml must be changed to reflect a new location.

Such steps can be avoided by storing foo.shp inside of the data directory. In such a case the datastore entry in catalog.xml becomes:

<datastore id="foo_shapefile">
  <connectionParams>
    <parameter name="url" value="file:data/foo.shp"/>
  </connectionParams>
</datastore>

The value attribute is re-written to be relative. In this way the entire data directory can be archived, copied to the new host, un-archived, and used directly with no additional changes.

demo¶

The demo directory contains files which define the sample requests available in the Sample Request Tool (http://localhost:8080/geoserver/demoRequest.do). For more information see the Demos page for more information.

geosearch¶

The geosearch directory is not named quite correctly. It contains information for regionation of KML files.

gwc¶

This directory holds the cache created by the embedded GeoWebCache service.

layergroups¶

Contains information on the layer groups configurations.

palettes¶

The palettes directory is used to store pre-computed Image Palettes. Image palettes are used by the GeoServer WMS as way to reduce the size of produced images while maintaining image quality.

security¶

The security directory contains all the files used to configure the GeoServer security subsystem. This includes a set of property files which define access roles, along with the services and data each role is authorized to access. See the Security section for more information.

styles¶

The styles directory contains a number of Styled Layer Descriptor (SLD) files which contain styling information used by the GeoServer WMS. For each file in this directory there is a corresponding entry in catalog.xml:

<style id="point_style" file="default_point.sld"/>

See the Styling for more information about styling and SLD .

templates¶

The template directory contains files used by the GeoServer templating subsystem. Templates are used to customize the output of various GeoServer operations.

user_projections¶

The user_projections directory contains a single file called epsg.properties which is used to define custom spatial reference systems which are not part of the official EPSG database.

www¶

The www directory is used to allow GeoServer to act like a regular web server and serve regular files. While not a replacement for a full blown web server the www directory can be useful for serving OpenLayers map applications.