WFS output formats

WFS returns features and feature information in a number of possible formats. This page shows a list of the output formats. In all cases the syntax for setting an output format is:

outputFormat=<outputformat>

where <outputformat> is any of the options below.

Note

Some additional output formats are available with the use of an extension, such as Excel. This list applies just to the basic GeoServer installation. The full list of output formats supported by your GeoServer instance can be found by requesting your WFS GetCapabilities.

Format Syntax Notes
GML2 outputFormat=GML2 Default option using WFS 1.0.0
GML3 outputFormat=GML3 Default option using WFS 1.1.0
Shapefile outputFormat=shape-zip Created in a ZIP archive
JSON outputFormat=json  
CSV outputFormat=csv  

Zipped shapefile customisation

Starting with GeoServer version 2.0.3 the zipped shapefile output format output can be customized by preparing a Freemarker template which will drive the file names of the zip file and the shapefiles in it. The default template looks like the following:

zip=${typename}
shp=${typename}${geometryType}
txt=wfsrequest

Structurally this is a property file, the zip property is the name of the zip file, the shp property the name of the shapefile for a given feature type and txt is the dump of the WFS request (the request dump is also available starting with version 2.0.3).

The properties available in the template are:

  • typename: the feature type name (for the zip property it will be the first feature type in case of a request containing many)
  • geometryType: the type of geometry contained in the shapefile (it used only if the output geometry type is generic and the variuos geometries are fanned out in one shapefile per type)
  • workspace: the workspace of the feature type
  • timestamp: a Date object with the request timestamp
  • iso_timestamp: a string, the ISO timestamp of the request at GMT, in the yyyyMMdd_HHmmss format

Format options as parameter in WFS requests

The format_options vendor specific parameter is a container for parameters that are format specific. The options in it are expressed as:

param1:value1;param2:value2;...

The currently recognized format options are:

filename: Applies only to the SHAPE-ZIP output format. If a file name is indicated, it is used as the output file name. For example:

format_options=FILENAME:roads.zip

Otherwise a file name is inferred from the requested feature type(s) name.

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