SYNOPSIS
sortshp [ infile outfile item [ascending | descending] | -v]DESCRIPTION
sortshp sorts a Shape data set based on a single column in ascending or descending order. Supports INTEGER, DOUBLE and STRING column types. Useful for prioritizing shapes for rendering and/or labeling.The idea here is that if you know that you need to display a certain attribute classed by a certain value, it will be faster for MapServer to access that value if it is at the beginning of the attribute file.
OPTIONS
- infile
- The name of the .shp file
- outfile
- The name of the .shp/.shx and .dbf files to create
- item
- Name of the field to sort on
- ascending, descending
- Sort order (default: ascending)
- -v
- Display mapserver version and build options.
EXAMPLE
This example uses a roads file ('roads_ugl') that has a field with road classes in integer format ('class1').
sortshp roads_ugl roads-sort class1 ascending
Result:
- A new Shape data set named 'roads-sort.shp' is created with shapes sorted in ascending order, according to the values in the 'class1' field.
Figure 1: Attributes Before sortshp <http://mapserver.org/_images/sortshp-before.png>
Figure 2: Attributes After sortshp <http://mapserver.org/_images/sortshp-after.png>