Getting started overview¶
The Configuration Builder produces a single JSON file — the config — that fully describes an APEx Geospatial Explorer instance: its branding, layout, the services it talks to, and the layers and charts it shows.
The main tabs¶
The top navigation gives you one tab per major concern.
| Tab | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Home | The project dashboard — load and save configurations, edit project metadata, see what your config contains at a glance, and launch the healthcheck. |
| Layers | Build the visible content of your APEx Geospatial Explorer — every map layer, its data source(s), how it is styled, and where it appears in the UI. |
| Draw Order | Control the front-to-back stacking of layers on the map. Each layer's position here determines its zIndex in the rendered map. |
| Services | Register and validate reusable endpoint definitions (WMS, WMTS, WFS, COG, XYZ, GeoJSON, FlatGeoBuf, CSV, S3, STAC). Layers reference services by name, so you can swap an endpoint URL in one place. |
| Settings | Top-level configuration that applies to the whole APEx Geospatial Explorer instance: export filename, design variant, navigation defaults, custom CRS, branding, footer links, interface groups, and URL parameters reference. |
| JSON Config | Inspect the raw configuration document as it would be exported, or paste in a configuration to load. URLs are sanitised in the preview. |
| GE Preview | Run the actual APEx Geospatial Explorer inline using your current config — the fastest way to confirm a layer renders, a colormap looks right, or the layer panel reads sensibly before shipping. |
Core concepts¶
Config¶
The whole document you are editing. You can load one from disk, from a GitHub repo, or from a URL, and you can export it back to JSON at any time. See Loading and saving.
Layer (data source)¶
A renderable thing on the map. A layer points at one or more service URLs
(data and optional statistics), specifies how it should be styled, and
declares which interface group it belongs to. Layers are managed from the
Layers tab.
Service¶
A reusable endpoint definition managed from the Services tab. Services play one of two roles today:
- WMS / WMTS / WFS services are referenced live by layers — the chosen layer from the service is the data source, and editing the service URL re-points every layer that uses it.
- STAC catalogues and S3 buckets are primarily a way to browse and pick assets in the config builder UI. The resolved direct URL of each picked file (COG, GeoJSON, FlatGeoBuf, CSV) is what gets written into the config; the catalogue/bucket entry itself is not required at runtime.
Support for referencing a STAC collection itself as a live data source (for example to drive the temporal control with a time series of items) is planned for a future release.
Interface group¶
A user-facing grouping in the APEx Geospatial Explorer's layer panel — for example "Land Cover", "Soils", "Climate". Interface groups give the APEx Geospatial Explorer's UI its top-level structure. Manage them from Settings → Interface Groups.
Base layer¶
A special layer type used for the underlying basemap (OSM, satellite, etc.). Base layers are listed separately in the layers panel and exported into a distinct part of the config.
Healthcheck¶
A built-in tool that probes every URL in your config and reports per-layer Data Access and Performance scores. See Run Healthcheck.
Next steps¶
- Build your first config — a guided walk-through, from blank canvas to exported JSON.
- Loading and saving — pull in an existing config, or start from the Comprehensive demo example.
- Run Healthcheck — once a config is loaded, this is the fastest sanity check.
Follow along with the demo
Most screenshots in this guide were captured with the Comprehensive demo loaded. Open it from Home → Load → Examples to see the same state on screen as you read.