MapInfo Pro
Accessing OS Features API via MapInfo Pro
MapInfo Pro is a desktop geographic information system (GIS) application that allows you to visualize, analyse, edit, interpret and output geospatial data.
These instructions demonstrate how to integrate and apply the OS Features API into MapInfo in order to produce a series of topography layers based on our latest OS MasterMap Topography layer data.
What you need?
MapInfo Pro 2021 or later.
A preloaded base map, for example OS Maps API.
OS Features API URL and key. See Getting started with an API project for more information.
Instructions
We used MapInfo Pro 2021 (64-bit) to create these instructions
Launch MapInfo Pro. Load a base map. This helps you to navigate to features. We use OS Maps API as the base map. See the OS Maps API MapInfo Pro getting started guide for instructions on how to load it into MapInfo Pro.
With OS Maps API loaded as the base map, zoom to an area of interest that you'd like to use.
Navigate to the Home tab and select the dropdown arrow under Open to reveal Web Services.
Select Feature (WFS) to open the WFS Table configuration dialog.
Click Servers… to open the WFS Servers List dialog and then click Add…
In the new WFS Server Information dialog:
Server URL: Insert the OS Features API URL. This URL includes your key from the OS Data Hub.
Description: This is an optional field. A description may help with identification in the future.
Click OK.
In the WFS Servers List dialog, select the new connection you've just added and click OK.
In the WFS Table dialog, the OS Features API service and a list of vector feature layers will be available:
In the WFS Table dialog, select the vector feature layer that you require. Make sure the following settings are applied:
Max. Features: Not selected.
Enable feature paging: Selected. This checkbox is in the Paging section.
Page size: 100
Row Filter… . Click this option to apply a filter to the vector layer. This is recommended to ensure you keep within the feature limit thresholds that are applied to the OS Features API.
In the Row Picker dialog, select filtering options in the Column, Operator and Value column dropdowns. Various filters that may be available (or suitable). At a minimum, we recommended you use the SHAPE column with the BBOX operator. This ensures features are returned only within the bounding box of the zoomed in base map (see step 2)
Click OK.
In the WFS Table dialog, click OK to add to the layer to the map.
The features should now be loaded as a separate layer on top of your base map.
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