[Freegis-list] Newbie Question

[Nico de Haen]

Thank you for all the hints. As fas as I can see, there is currently 
no public Web Service or public server API available, I would have to 
install GRASS and implement my own web service or extend the SWIG API...

What seems strange to me is, that requests which return a raster file 
are possible but quite more simple requests for just one property of a 
single point aren't availabe. There has to be some kind of data base 
in the back bone, where the datas for single points are stored and it 
cannot be so difficult to query this data base...

Anyway, I'm not experienced with geo data at all and so maybe I 
misunderstand the principals.

Since I want to publish the tool as extension for an OpenSource CMS 
(Typo3) it doesn't make sense to include an application which has to 
be installed on a web server. I can only include the elevation data if 
there is some public access to such data, which seems not to be the 
case...

Nico


--- Original Nachricht ---
Absender: Markus Neteler
Datum: 17.02.2006 16:55
> On Thu, Feb 16, 2006 at 01:19:55PM +0100, Nico de Haen wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> I wonder if it is possible to get the altitude of a certain geographic 
>> point (for which I have the Latitude and Longitude) via a web service 
>> or another API from some Server in the internet.
>> 
>> I'm programming in PHP and would appreciate if someone could provide 
>> an example.
>> 
>> Thanks for Help,
>  
> Nico,
> 
> GRASS comes with a prototype SWIG API
>  http://mpa.itc.it/markus/grass61progman/swig/main.html
> which I would like to see extended. This could become
> the backbone to such a query which is simply the 'r.what'
> command in GRASS. Wrapping 'r.what' in SWIG, a SWIG-PHP
> interface could do what you need.
> 
> Markus