MS RFC 95: Support for lists in expression parser¶
- Date:
2013/04/04
- Author:
Thomas Bonfort
- Contact:
- Status:
Adopted
- Version:
MapServer 6.4
1. Overview¶
We have a relatively low hanging performance speedup related to expressions when doing class filtering. The context relates to when there’s the need to apply a given CLASS to multiple attribute values.
Currently, to apply a single class to multiple values of an attribute, you can either use regular expressions, or use the IN operator, like this:
LAYER
...
CLASSITEM "type"
CLASS
EXPRESSION /primary|secondary|tertiary/ #regular expression on CLASSITEM
EXPRESSION ("[type]" IN "primary,secondary,tertiary") #"complex" parser expression
...
END
END
Both methods require quite a bit of overhead, either in the regex system calls, or by using quite a few mallocs when going through the IN parser operation.
2. Proposed solution¶
We can cut down on this overhead by adding a « list » expression type, denoted by the { } delimiters, where the previous layer definition becomes:
LAYER
...
CLASSITEM "type"
CLASS
EXPRESSION {primary,secondary,tertiary}
...
END
END
In that case, the expression parsing is a simple string lookup inside msEvalExpression() instead of having to go down into the system regex or the parser.
3. Implementation Details¶
The modifications to the code are fairly straightforward:
Support for the {} delimiters in the lexer (maplexer.l)
New expression type MS_LIST in mapserver.h
support for finding an attribute value in the given list in msEvalExpression() in maputil.c
Loading, saving and copying the expression in mapfile.c and mapcopy.c
4. Limitations¶
setters and getters will not be initially added for mapscript (use classObj.updateFromString(« EXPRESSION {foo,bar,baz} »)
Quoting and escaping inside the list is not supported, i.e. attribute values cnanot contain the “ , « or , characters.
4. Backwards Compatibility Issues¶
None, new functionality
5. Performance implications¶
The expression parser had already been sped up in 6.0 with the use of precompiled expressions, this goes one step further for the specific case where a given CLASS should match multiple attribute values
6. Bug ID¶
7. Voting history¶
+1: MikeS, TomK, DanielM, SteveW, ThomasB