Mapbender is a web based geoportal framework.

Official site | Live demo | News on Twitter

For detailed usage information, including installation and integration topics, please see official documentation (also available in German).

Requirements

Mapbender requires PHP 8.1, OpenSSL, curl, bzip2 decompression and the following php extensions:

• zip
• curl
• gd
• intl
• mbstring
• bz2
• xml
• sqlite3
• ldap

You may have to install and enable further extensions at your own discretion if you want to use specific database systems.

We also recommend installing an sqlite client so you can inspect the (default) sqlite database.

E.g.

Ubuntu / Debian

sudo apt-get install php php-cli openssl bzip2 \
    php-curl php-gd php-intl php-mbstring \
    php-zip php-bz2 php-xml \
    php-sqlite3 php-pgsql php-mysql php-ldap \
    sqlite3 curl

System configuration

Some portions of Mapbender require correctly configured, writable PHP temporary directories sys_temp_dir and upload_tmp_dir.

Your system most likely has separate php.ini files for cli and web server SAPIs such as mod_php, php-fpm, fcgi etc. Make sure to make changes in all php.ini files relevant to your installation.

Getting the code

Git clone mapbender-starter via https or ssh (requires configured git credentials) at your preference:

git clone https://github.com/mapbender/mapbender-starter.git mapbender-starter

or

git clone git@github.com:mapbender/mapbender-starter.git mapbender-starter

Bootstrapping

Switch to project directory and run ./bootstrap

cd mapbender-starter
./bootstrap

The bootstrap command performs the following required setup tasks for you:

• installs userland dependencies (via composer)
• creates a parameters.yaml by copying the bundled parameters.yml.dist
• creates a .env.local file by copying the bundled .env.local.dist
• performs the necessary database setup (as an sqlite file in application/var/db/demo.sqlite)
• creates a root account with a default password root (which you should change later)

The full setup processes is only needed once. If you invoke it again, nothing of consequence will happen.

Built-in server

You can test your freshly bootstrapped Mapbender installation using symfony's development server. This is not production quality, and has some known issues processing external requests (such as in printing), but it allows some quick testing before you set up a production-grade web server.

To run the server you need to install the Symfony CLI first.

Then, the server is started like this:

cd application
symfony server:start --no-tls

The URL is shown in the output:

 [OK] Web server listening                                                                                              
      The Web server is using PHP CLI 8.2.10                                                                            
      http://127.0.0.1:8001      

Environments

Two environments are available:

• dev shows full error messages including stack traces in the browser and enables the symfony debug console and profiler. Also, caching is disabled.
• prod enables caching and shows only generic error messages. Error messages are written to logfiles.

The environment can be set via the APP_ENV environment variable. The default is dev. Make sure to change this when deploying your application in the internet. The value can be changed in several ways:

• by editing APP_ENV in the .env file
• by overriding the value in a .env.local file
• by explicitly setting it when starting the local webserver: APP_ENV=prod symfony server:start --no-tls
• by setting an environment variable in your Apache2 vHost configuration: SetEnv APP_ENV prod

The index_dev.php file allows direct access to the dev environment. It can only be accessed from local ip addresses by default for security reasons.

Changing root account password

From the application directory run:

bin/console fom:user:resetroot

Docker

Run this command to start a local Mapbender instance in a docker container using an internal SQLite database.

docker run -p 80:8080 mapbender/mapbender

If you want Mapbender to stay up and running in background add the -d option.

Port 8080

The container is accepting HTTP requests on port 8080 by default.

Env variables

You can use environment variables to adjust the configuration of the Mapbender docker container.

• APP_ENV Symfony app environment. (prod, dev, test)
• MAILER_DSN Smtp server configuration. (smtp://user:pass@smtp.example.com:25)
• MAPBENDER_DATABASE_URL configure Mapbender to connect to another database as shown in the upcoming example. (find examples at https://symfony.com/doc/current/doctrine.html#configuring-the-database)

external database

To run a Mapbender docker container configured to use an external database use the MAPBENDER_DATABASE_URL environment variable.

1. Create the docker network

   docker network create -d bridge mapbender

2. Start the PostGIS database

   docker run --name db --network mapbender -p 55432:5432 -e POSTGRES_USER=pguser -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=pgpass -e POSTGRES_DB=postgres postgis/postgis:14-3.4

3. Start Mapbender

   docker run --name mapbender --network mapbender -p 80:8080 -e MAPBENDER_DATABASE_URL="pgsql://pguser:pgpass@db:5432/postgres" mapbender/mapbender

4. Create Mapbender database schema

   docker exec mapbender php application/bin/console doctrine:schema:create --force

5. Initialize Mapbender database

   docker exec mapbender php application/bin/console mapbender:database:init -v

docker/docker-compose.pgsql.yml

If the Mapbender container is configured to connect to an external database that does not have the required schema yet, the schema must be created first. Start our demo setup using the following command to start a Mapbender instance connected to an empty PostgreSQL database:

docker compose -f docker-compose.pgsql.yml up -d

You can initialize the database after the Mapbender container has started.

docker compose -f docker-compose.pgsql.yml exec mapbender php application/bin/console doctrine:schema:update --force

And after that initialize the Mapbender database.

docker compose -f docker-compose.pgsql.yml exec mapbender php application/bin/console mapbender:database:init -v

Issues

Please report issues on Github.

Other downloads

Pre-packaged archives bundling all code dependencies are available at our download page.

Other versions

Mapbender release line	PHP versions	Bundled Symfony version	Bundled composer version
3.0.8 (end of life)	>=5.5, <=7.2	2.8LTS (end of life)	1.6.x
3.2 (end of life)	>=7.1, <=7.4	3.4LTS (end of life)	1.10.x
3.3	>=7.4	4.4LTS (end of life)	2.1.x
4.0	>=8.1	6.4LTS	2.6.x