Parse a specific NetCDF attribute to set the WMS layer name

[MVivien]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

At the moment if I set skinnywms to parse a folder containing several NetCDFs of the same variable I can only distinguish the resulting WMS layers by their timestamp or predefined levels with specific standard names ("air_pressure", "altitude", "plev", "isobaricInhPa", "model_level_number").

For any other coordinates there is no way to distinguish the WMS layer and only the fist or last NetCDF parsed by skinnywms is visible in the GetCapabilities.

The workaround I found is to rename the NetCDF variable to be unique and specific to each 2D file to that I can find the unique WMS layer name in the GetCapabilities.

Describe the solution you'd like

Changing the NetCDF variable name to obtain a unique WMS layer name is rot really a nice thing to do but a handy alternative would be to parse for a specific NetCDF attribute to set the WMS layer name such as wms_layer_name or skinnywms_name.

This would allow to create unique WMS layers from a folder containing 2D NetCDFs of the same variable based on that attribute.

A typical example I am currently working on are storm footprints which are a 2D fields of wind gust. The "levels" which I am not able to distinguish with skinnywms are for example:

• which algorithm was used to generate the footprint,
• whether the footprint is downscaled or not,
• whether the footprint is decontaminated or not.

All these "levels" would be easy to include in a WMS layer name.

Describe alternatives you've considered

The alternative would be to support more coordinates with a wider variety of standard names but this seems more complex and less generic.

Additional context

A specific attribute (magics_style) is already parsed to set the WMS style and provides a handy alternative to the automatic style setting and a great way to pass a custom style.
The solution I propose to set the WMS layer name seems very similar to me and I hope it will be accepted and easy enough to implement.

Organisation

B-Open