So far the GeoServer module offers support managing vector layers in GeoServer from within Drupal. The goal is now to also offer support for creating and managing raster based layers and to integrate this functionality in Drupal.

GeoServer will officially ship with the importer module as a community extension starting with version 2.5, but the importer module is also already available in the recent 2.4 versions (see this discussion).

Open for discussion:

  • Is the REST API of the importer module suited for this case?
  • Does the REST API support user permissions? At least in earlier versions of the importer module the user had to have administrative permissions in geoserver to use the API.
  • How to manage te upload of large raster images?
  • What restructuring of the Drupal GeoServer module is needed?
  • Drupal 7 or Drupal 8?