PHP Coding on GeoServer

I want to use a Php script to retrieve information from the .db file of a shapefile saved as a layer in Geoserver. I need to retrieve attribute data from the layer and present it at the client side. Is this possible with the functionality provided by the geoserver?

If this is your specific question, no. Geoserver is a Java application, PHP is a language/server environment. They do not mix, in any way besides PHP, for instance, requesting things from Geoserver via REST or some OGC standard.

If your question is whether PHP can read attributes from shapefiles, the answer is a kind of, see its dbase support.

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yes it is very possible and called web feature service, you can make wfs requests to geoserver with curl library and pass that information to your client. data from geoserver is served as GML,JSON etc. you need to parse this information


how do I get php to connect automatically to GeoServer?

You can use the GeoServer REST API. With it, you can create and retrieve workspaces, featuretypes/layers, intereact with PostGIS, etc, from within your PHP application. Refer to the REST documentation and PHP REST Examples for details.