These utilities are included with the MapServer distribution. User contributed utilities and other freely available tools are available here.x
shp2img
Purpose: Creates a map from a mapfile. Output is either PNG or GIF
depending on what version of the GD library used.
Syntax: shp2img -m [mapfile] -o [image] -t -l [layers]
legend
Purpose: Creates a legend from a mapfile. Output is either PNG or GIF depending
on what version of the GD library used.
Syntax: legend [mapfile] [output image]
scalebar
Purpose: Creates a scalebar from a mapfile. Output is either PNG or GIF
depending on what version of the GD library used.
Syntax: scalebar [mapfile] [output image]
sortshp
Purpose: Sorts a shapefile 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.
Syntax: sortshp [infile] [outfile] [item] [ascending|descending]
sym2img
Purpose: Creates a graphic dump of a symbol file. Output is either PNG or GIF
depending on what version of the GD library used.
Syntax: sym2img [symbolfile] [outfile]
shptree
Purpose: Creates a quadtree-based spatial index for a shapefile.
The default tree depth is calculated so that each tree node (quadtree cell)
contains 8 shapes. Do not use the default with point files, a value between 6 and 10 seems
to work ok. Your millage may vary and you'll need to do some experimenting.
Syntax: shptree [shpfile] {depth}
tile4ms
Purpose: Creates a tile index shapefile for use with MapServer's
TILEINDEX feature. The program creates a shapefile of rectangles
from extents of all the shapefiles listed in [metafile] (one shapefile
name per line) and the associated DBF with the filename for each shape tile
in a column called LOCATION as required by mapserv.
Syntax: tile4ms [metafile] [tilefile] [-tile-path-only]
-tile-path-only is an optional flag which specifies that only the path to the shape file
should be stored in the LOCATION field.
Example: create tileindex.shp for all tiles under the /path/to/data
directory (works only on Unix):
cd /path/to/data
find . -name "*.shp" -print > metafile.txt
tile4ms metafile.txt tileindex