Beacon WMS

Beacon WMS is a web map service built with a dual-backend architecture for optimal performance and scalability.

Overview

Architecture

The application consists of two complementary backends:

• Node.js Backend: Handles client communication, templating, and OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) compliance
• Rust Backend: Handles high-performance map drawing and querying operations

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Getting Started

Prerequisites

Before running Beacon WMS, ensure you have the following installed:

• Node.js
• Rust

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Running Beacon WMS

Production (with Docker)

To build and run both backends using Docker:

docker compose up --build

Development (Local)

Run both backends in separate terminal windows:

Terminal 1 - Rust Backend:

cd rust-backend
cargo run --release  # Use --release for better performance

Terminal 2 - Node.js Backend:

cd node-backend
npm install
npm run dev

Rust Backend Environment Variables

Variable	Default	Used for
HTTP_ADDRESS	0.0.0.0	Rust backend bind address.
HTTP_PORT	8000	Rust backend HTTP port.
WORKERS	12	Number of Tokio worker threads.
LOG_DIR	../logs	Directory for backend logs.
LOG_LEVEL	INFO	Log verbosity (TRACE, DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR).
CONFIG_DIR	../config	Base directory for config files like config.json and colormaps.json.
CONFIG_FILE	config.json	Main backend config file name (resolved under CONFIG_DIR).
LAYER_DIR	../layers	Directory where generated layer parquet files are stored.
BEACON_TOKEN	(none)	Auth token used for Beacon API queries.
TILE_CACHE_ENABLED	false	Enables tile image cache when set to 1, true, yes, or on.
TILE_CACHE_DIR	../tile_cache	Root directory for tile cache files.

Node Backend Environment Variables

Variable	Default	Used for
HTTP_ADDRESS	0.0.0.0	Node backend bind address.
HTTP_PORT	3000	Node backend HTTP port.
RUST_BACKEND_URL	http://localhost:8000	Base URL for forwarding WMS requests to Rust backend.
CONFIG_DIR	../config	Base directory for Node config files.
CONFIG_FILE	config.json	Node config file name (resolved under CONFIG_DIR).
LOG_DIR	../logs	Directory for Node logs.
PATH_PREFIX	(empty)	URL prefix prepended to Node routes.
HTTP_HOST	Request host header	Host used in generated capabilities URLs.
HTTP_PROTOCOL	Request protocol	Protocol used in generated capabilities URLs.
ADMIN_SECRET	(empty)	Bearer token required for admin endpoints (must be set to enable).