Filters

A filter is the mechanism in SLD for specifying conditions. They are similar in functionality to the SQL “WHERE” clause. Filters are used within Rules to determine which styles should be applied to which features in a data set. The filter language used by SLD follows the OGC Filter Encoding standard. It is described in detail in the Filter Encoding Reference.

A filter condition is specified by using a comparison operator or a spatial operator, or two or more of these combined by logical operators. The operators are usually used to compare properties of the features being filtered to other properties or to literal data.

Comparison operators

Comparison operators are used to specify conditions on the non-spatial attributes of a feature. The following binary comparison operators are available:

  • <PropertyIsEqualTo>
  • <PropertyIsNotEqualTo>
  • <PropertyIsLessThan>
  • <PropertyIsLessThanOrEqualTo>
  • <PropertyIsGreaterThan>
  • <PropertyIsGreaterThanOrEqualTo>

These operators contain two filter expressions to be compared. The first operand is often a <PropertyName>, but both operands may be any expression, function or literal value.

Binary comparison operators may include a matchCase attribute with the value true or false. If this attribute is true (which is the default), string comparisons are case-sensitive. If the attribute is specified and has the value false strings comparisons do not check case.

Other available value comparison operators are:

  • <PropertyIsLike>
  • <PropertyIsNull>
  • <PropertyIsBetween>

<PropertyIsLike> matches a string property value against a text pattern. It contains a <PropertyName> element containing the name of the property containing the string to be matched and a <Literal> element containing the pattern. The pattern is specified by a sequence of regular characters and three special pattern characters. The pattern characters are defined by the following required attributes of the <PropertyIsLike> element:

  • wildCard specifies a pattern character which matches any sequence of zero or more characters
  • singleChar specifies a pattern character which matches any single character
  • escapeChar specifies an escape character which can be used to escape these pattern characters

<PropertyIsNull> tests whether a property value is null. It contains a single <PropertyName> element containing the name of the property containing the value to be tested.

<PropertyIsBetween> tests whether an expression value lies within a range. It contains a filter expression providing the value to test, followed by the elements <LowerBoundary> and <UpperBoundary>, each containing a filter expression.

Examples

  • The following filter selects features whose NAME attribute has the value of “New York”:
<PropertyIsEqualTo>
   <PropertyName>NAME</PropertyName>
   <Literal>New York</Literal>
</PropertyIsEqualTo>
  • The following filter selects features whose geometry area is greater than 1,000,000:
<PropertyIsGreaterThan>
   <ogc:Function name="area">
     <PropertyName>GEOMETRY</PropertyName>
   </ogc:Function>
   <Literal>1000000</Literal>
</PropertyIsEqualTo>

Spatial operators

Spatial operators are used to specify conditions on the geometric attributes of a feature. The following spatial operators are available:

Topological Operators

These operators test topological spatial relationships using the standard OGC Simple Features predicates:

  • <Intersects>
  • <Equals>
  • <Disjoint>
  • <Touches>
  • <Within>
  • <Overlaps>
  • <Crosses>
  • <Intersects>
  • <Contains>

The content for these operators is a <PropertyName> element for a geometry-valued property and a GML geometry literal.

Distance Operators

These operators compute distance relationships between geometries:

  • <DWithin>
  • <Beyond>

The content for these elements is a <PropertyName> element for a geometry-valued property, a GML geometry literal, and a <Distance> element containing the value for the distance tolerance. The <Distance> element may include an optional units attribute.

Bounding Box Operator

This operator tests whether a feature geometry attribute intersects a given bounding box:

  • <BBOX>

The content is an optional <PropertyName> element, and a GML envelope literal. If the PropertyName is omitted the default geometry attribute is assumed.

Examples

  • The following filter selects features with a geometry that intersects the point (1,1):
<Intersects>
   <PropertyName>GEOMETRY</PropertyName>
   <Literal>
      <gml:Point>
         <gml:coordinates>1 1</gml:coordinates>
      </gml:Point>
   </Literal>
</Intersects>
  • The following filter selects features with a geometry that intersects the box [-10,0 : 10,10]:
<ogc:BBOX>
  <ogc:PropertyName>GEOMETRY</ogc:PropertyName>
  <gml:Box srsName="urn:x-ogc:def:crs:EPSG:4326">
    <gml:coord>
      <gml:X>-10</gml:X> <gml:Y>0</gml:Y>
    </gml:coord>
    <gml:coord>
      <gml:X>10</gml:X> <gml:Y>10</gml:Y>
    </gml:coord>
  </gml:Box>
</ogc:BBOX>

Logical operators

Logical operators are used to create logical combinations of other filter operators. They may be nested to any depth. The following logical operators are available:

  • <And>
  • <Or>
  • <Not>

The content for <And> and <Or> is two filter operator elements. The content for <Not> is a single filter operator element.

Examples

  • The following filter uses <And> to combine a comparison operator and a spatial operator:
<And>
   <PropertyIsEqualTo>
      <PropertyName>NAME</PropertyName>
      <Literal>New York</Literal>
   </PropertyIsEqualTo>
   <Intersects>
      <PropertyName>GEOMETRY</PropertyName>
      <Literal>
         <gml:Point>
             <gml:coordinates>1 1</gml:coordinates>
         </gml:Point>
      </Literal>
   </Intersects>
</And>

Filter Expressions

Filter expressions allow performing computation on data values. The following elements can be used to form expressions.

Arithmetic Operators

These operators perform arithmetic on numeric values. Each contains two expressions as sub-elements.

  • <Add>
  • <Sub>
  • <Mul>
  • <Div>

Functions

The <Function> element specifies a filter function to be evaluated. The name attribute gives the function name. The element contains a sequence of zero or more filter expressions providing the function arguments. See the Filter Function Reference for details of the functions provided by GeoServer.

Feature Property Values

The <PropertyName> element allows referring to the value of a given feature attribute. It contains a string specifying the attribute name.

Literals

The <Literal> element allows specifying constant values of numeric, boolean, string, date or geometry type.