We will use WFS to get vector data encoded in GML. In case you disabled it, as we did in Chapter 11, Tuning GeoServer in a Production Environment, you will need to enable the WFS in GeoServer. Open your command-line console; we will use curl to send requests:

1. The first operation that we will use is GetCapabilities. It describes which feature types and operations are available on the server:

      $ curl -XGET "http://localhost/geoserver/wfs?
        service=wfs&version=1.0.0&request=GetCapabilities"
        -o getCapabilities.xml

2. The XML returned is quite huge; apart from a standard part describing the WFS service and the supported operation, it contains a description for any FeatureType configured on GeoServer. The total length of the file depends on the FeatureTypes number. The following lines show you the brief description for a FeatureType...