Presented by Logan Pugh, City of Austin

1. CONNECT. TRANSFORM. AUTOMATE.
Implementing a simple web
application with FME Server
Logan Pugh
Programmer Analyst, City of Austin
Tony Castro
GIS Analyst, City of Austin
Ben Vanderford
GIS Analyst Senior, City of Austin

2. Who, what, when, where, why
and how?
 Who: Small GIS shop in a big (and growing) city
 What: Provide zoning verifications (among other
services) to property owners and developers
 When: 50 to 80 requests a month
 Where: City of Austin, Texas
 Why: Each request used to take 1-2 hours
 How: Tedious manual process of verifying
zoning, hand-editing a PDF and sending it to
customer

3. What is zoning verification?
 Zoning in Austin started in
1930s
 Zoning verifications started in
1960s
 Developers and property
owners need zoning
verification to get financing
for (re)development

4. Old Process was Cumbersome:
The Fatigue Factor
 Lots of research and keying in values
 Name of applicant and address
 Parcel ID
 Index grid
 Zoning type, definition and ordinance
 Print, sign and mail/fax/hand-deliver letter to
sales office for customer pickup

5. Old letter format New letter format

6. The Tipping Point
 With an ever-increasing workload and not-so-
increasing budget/staffing, we need to increase
efficiencies
 Our staff time stretched, a new zoning verification
process became a high priority
 Along comes FME Server: we had a new option!

7. Project Requirements
 Accept a parcel number in various formats
 Perform zoning info drilldown with complex
filtering logic
 Allow operator to edit/correct info
 Generate PDF with electronic signature
automatically
 Ability to easily be configured for future changes
(new users, jurisdictions, etc.)
 Spell checking

8. Challenges
 How to automate what is by definition a human-
verified process?
 How can we own the process but provide access
to people outside of our workgroup?
 How can we build this without any additional
infrastructure?

9. FME Server Data Streaming
Service
 Serves up the results of workspaces directly
 Can be HTML, JSON, PDF, etc.
 Result must be a single file
 Allows everything to work within the context of a
web browser

10. FME Server REST API
 Simple protocol for programmatically interacting
with FME Server
 Uses HTTP requests, e.g. GET, PUT, DELETE
 Authentication using simple token service
 Tokens are per-user, but can be shared for specific
applications
 FME REST API Developer Playground:
http://fmeserver.com/userweb/sharper/playground/

11. Workspaces
 Zoning info drilldown workspace
 Given a parcel number and parcel agency, returns
the zoning types, ordinances and case numbers
intersecting a given parcel
 Negative buffer to reduce erroneous results caused
by inaccuracies between zoning and parcel data
 Filter out non-applicable zoning ordinances

12. Zoning Info Drilldown workspace
Workspaces, cont.
ZoningOrdinanceDateCalculator custom transformer ZoningOrdinanceFilter custom transformer

13. Workspaces, cont.
 PDF generation workspace
 Given various parameters, produces a complete,
signed zoning verification letter in PDF format
 CSV to JSON workspaces
 Editors
 Requestors
 Agencies

14. Workspaces, cont.
PDFTextBlockCreator custom transformerPDF Builder workspace
PDFRectangleTextCreatorcustom transformer
PDFImageCreatorcustom transformer

15. Workspaces, cont.
 HTML form builder workspace
 Serves up an HTML file that ties everything
together
 Uses JavaScript (Dojo Toolkit) and the FME Server
REST API to request, display, edit, and submit data
 Can be pre-populated with data via parameters
submitted to FME Server

16. Demo

17. Behind the scenes
Browser
requests FME
Server
workspace
FME Server
runs
workspace,
returns HTML
result
JavaScript on
HTML form
makes calls to
FME Server
REST API
FME Server
runs
workspaces,
returns JSON
results
JavaScript
populates UI
elements
(Dojo
widgets)
User enters
form data,
submits
request for
PDF
FME Server
runs
workspace,
returns PDF
result
Operator
sends PDF to
customer
after verifying
all data

18. Key Transformers
 FeatureReader: Performs queries against any
FME-supported format. The queries can have
both a spatial and a nonspatial component.
 One query is issued to the FME-supported format
for each feature that enters the transformer. The
results of the query are then output.
 This means workspaces can read data dynamically
 One of the most powerful transformers in FME!

19. Key Transformers, cont.
 PythonCaller: Executes a Python script to
manipulate the feature.
Useful when implementing logic too complex to
handle with other transformers.
 Examples:
 Fixed-width word-wrapping, justification and special
character escaping for text elements on output PDF
 Using regular expressions to replace tokens in HTML
file with parameter values
 Building SQL expressions and sanitizing user input

20. Key Transformers, cont.
 JSONTemplater: Populates a JSON document
with FME feature attribute values
{
"status":
xs:int(fme:get-attribute("_statuscode")),
"message":
fme:get-attribute("_message"),
"data":{
"parcel_agency":
fme:get-attribute("_PARCEL_AGENCY"),
"parcel_id":
fme:get-attribute("_PARCEL_ID"),
"zoning_ztypes":
[fme:get-list-attribute("_ztype_list{}.ZONING_ZTYPE")],
"zoning_ordinance_case_numbers":
[fme:get-list-attribute("_case_number_list{}.CASE_NUMBER")],
"zoning_ordinance_numbers":
[fme:get-list-attribute("_ordinance_number_list{}.ZONING_ORDINANCE_NUMBER")]
}
}

21. Key Transformers, cont.

22. Key Transformers, cont.
{
"status":
xs:int(fme:get-attribute("_statuscode")),
"message":
fme:get-attribute("_message"),
"data":{
"parcel_agency":
fme:get-attribute(“_PARCEL_AGENCY"),
"parcel_id":
fme:get-attribute("_PARCEL_ID"),
"zoning_ztypes":
[fme:get-list-attribute("_ztype_list{}.ZONING_ZTYPE")],
"zoning_ordinance_case_numbers":
[fme:get-list-attribute("_case_number_list{}.CASE_NUMBER")],
"zoning_ordinance_numbers":
[fme:get-list-
attribute("_ordinance_number_list{}.ZONING_ORDINANCE_NUMBER")]
}
}

23. Key Transformers, cont.
{
"status":
xs:int(fme:get-attribute("_statuscode")),
"message":
fme:get-attribute("_message"),
"data":{
"parcel_agency":
fme:get-attribute("_PARCEL_AGENCY"),
"parcel_id":
fme:get-attribute("_PARCEL_ID"),
"zoning_ztypes":
[fme:get-list-attribute("_ztype_list{}.ZONING_ZTYPE")],
"zoning_ordinance_case_numbers":
[fme:get-list-attribute("_case_number_list{}.CASE_NUMBER")],
"zoning_ordinance_numbers":
[fme:get-list-
attribute("_ordinance_number_list{}.ZONING_ORDINANCE_NUMBER")]
}
}

24. Configuration
 Enterprise applications require configurability
 Avoid putting file paths, user names, passwords,
etc. directly in FME workspaces
 Allows workspaces to be shared with confidence,
placed under source control (e.g. Git), and
configured externally
 Uses simple text-based configuration files

25. Configuration, cont.
FME Server
Repositories
Workspace 1
Workspace 2
Workspace n
dev
Secure
Network
Folders
Workspace 1
Workspace 2
Workspace n
test
Workspace 1
Workspace 2
Workspace n
prod

26. Configuration, cont.
importos, ConfigParser
globalconfig_dict# Make variable accessible to other scripted parameters
config_dict = None
# Get path to config file located alongside published workspace
config_path_file = os.path.join(FME_MacroValues['FME_MF_DIR'], 'config_path.txt')
# Return config key/value pairs as a dictionary
withopen(config_path_file, 'r')as f:
config_file = f.readline().strip()
config_parser = ConfigParser.RawConfigParser()
config_parser.read(config_file)
config_dict = dict(config_parser.items('config'))
returnconfig_file
 Use Python scripted parameters to read in
configuration data. In first scripted parameter:

27. Configuration, cont.
# Just reference dictionary keys to get config values
returnconfig_dict['fmerest_token']
 Subsequent scripted parameters are easy:

28. Conclusions
 Reduced processing time from 1-2 hours to ~15
minutes
 Ability to email generated PDF to customer,
saving on paper use and mailing expenses
 Laid groundwork for use by other departments
and the public
 Demonstrates flexibility of FME Server

29. Future improvements
 Make app directly available to public
 Tie in with existing zoning profile web application
 Accept payments online
 Collaboration with external parcel agencies on
data alignment for improved accuracy

30. Thank You!
 Questions?
 For more information:
 Logan Pugh
 logan.pugh@austintexas.gov
 City of Austin
 Related web app available for public:
 http://www.austintexas.gov/gis/zoningprofile/