Getting Capabilities

A GetCapabilities call to a WMTS service returns three types of information: service-level metadata that describes the WMTS service, operations metadata that describes the operations and the encoding that is supported for each operation, and a list of layers and tile matrix sets that a client can request in a GetTile call.

Service-level metadata is the information that describes your WMTS server. This information includes the URL endpoint that clients use to access your server, a description of what the service provides, who owns the service, search keywords, and access restrictions or limitations.

A GetCapabilities request to the server returns the information in XML format.

To set up your WMTS service metadata and layer information, use Spatial Manager. For service metadata, go to WMTS > Settings > Service. For exposing the layers and styles, go to WMTS > Layers. In each location click Edit to make changes. See Managing WMTS Resources and Configuration for more information about using Spatial Manager for these tasks.

Requests

The possible request inputs depend on the type of encoding used, Key Value Pair (KVP) or REST.

Using KVP Encoding:

The request parameters are always sent as an HTTP query string. The following is a sample GetCapabilities request:


http://<server>:<port>/rest/Spatial/WMTS?SERVICE=WMTS&amp;REQUEST=GetCapabilities&amp;ACCEPTVERSIONS=1.0.0

Using RESTful Encoding:

The capabilities can be requested by using either of these URLs:

http://<server>:<port>/rest/Spatial/WMTS/1.0.0/WMTSCapabilities.xml

http://<server>:<port>/rest/Spatial/WMTS/1.0.0/WMTSCapabilities

Output

After a successful GetCapabilities request, the service returns a GetCapabilities response which is a descriptive XML file. The GetCapabilities.xml file contains the information on the services metadata, capabilities, and contents (layers and tile matrix sets). You can view a GetCapabilities response for your WMTS service from the Welcome page following installation. Click the link under the OGC Capabilities column for the WMTS Service on the Spatial Services tab.