Geoserver and dynamic markers

Question

I am really sorry to post this question, because most likely the solution will be really simple. But I am completely out of search string ideas.

I have a running Geoserver and some custom shapefiles describing buildings etc. I can requesting maps as pngs with the WMS interface and display on a website. So for so good.

In the next step I want to enable the user to specify a coordinate an draw a little marker on the map. This position should not be stored anywhere, I just want to draw it for this user. I am pretty sure this is possible with a WMS request and an inline feature, but I had not any luck finding a working solution and I am out of google search strings.

Please help me before I start drawing overlays over a png map.

Answer 1

You can do this with an inline feature in your SLD - See http://lyceum.massgis.state.ma.us/wiki/doku.php?id=wms:sld:inline_feature for an example.

Answer 2

You can let OpenLayers do the drawing on the client.

Check this example to see how it can be done. It demonstrates how to draw lines, points, and polygons: http://dev.openlayers.org/releases/OpenLayers-2.10/examples/draw-feature.html