XML stylesheet preview window

[springmeyer]

For anyone that knows Mapnik's XML styling language, what mess.js does is total black magic. So, for the potential audience of current Mapnik users it would be great to offer an XML preview window. This is key because the combo of sticking compiled XML in a hidden cache and obscuring the name with base64 encoding means that actually finding the file you have created is going to be non-starter.

If we implement this it would ideally be done not by reading the xml written directly by mess.js but rather by serializing the XML off the mapnik.Map object so that the XML is properly pretty printed. I've just exposed the ability to do this here: mapnik/node-mapnik@1d22fac

[kkaefer]

This sounds like a good idea. Maybe we should name the property "toString" to be in line with the JavaScript conventions.

[springmeyer]

Yes, I agree, I think I should overhaul node-mapnik to expose a CamelCase api. for now I've fixed just the to_string method since this is new and I doubt anyone has found it yet: mapnik/node-mapnik@cc719b2

[russellporter]

This would also be handy for setting up on-demand mapnik rendering servers (for OSM tiles etc)

[yhahn]

I've implemented a REST endpoint for this now at /api/Project/[project].xml ... not sure it's necessary to actually display this XML in the UI?