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WFS Service Settings

There are two GeoServer WFS service settings that are strongly recommended for interoperable complex feature services. These can be enabled through the Services → WFS page on the GeoServer web interface or by manually editing the wfs.xml file in the data directory,

Canonical schema location

The default GeoServer behaviour is to encode WFS responses that include a schemaLocation for the WFS schema that is located on the GeoServer instance. A client will not know without retrieving the schema whether it is identical to the official schema hosted at schemas.opengis.net. The solution is to encode the schemaLocation for the WFS schema as the canonical location at schemas.opengis.net.

To enable this option, choose one of these:

  1. Either: On the Service → WFS page under Conformance check Encode canonical WFS schema location.

  2. Or: Insert the following line before the closing tag in wfs.xml:

    <canonicalSchemaLocation>true</canonicalSchemaLocation>

Encode using featureMember

By default GeoServer will encode WFS 1.1 responses with multiple features in a single gml:featureMembers element. This will cause invalid output if a response includes a feature at the top level that has already been encoded as a nested property of an earlier feature, because there is no single element that can be used to encode this feature by reference. The solution is to encode responses using gml:featureMember.

To enable this option, choose one of these:

  1. Either: On the Service → WFS page under Encode response with select Multiple "featureMember" elements.

  2. Or: Insert the following line before the closing tag in wfs.xml:

    <encodeFeatureMember>true</encodeFeatureMember>