How can I display characters in a map by mapfile? - gis

Question

I'm trying to show a map using postGIS+Mapserver. And I've displayed a PNG picture in my WEB.
However, I want to show some charactors in the map, just like this:
mapserv demo http://demo.mapserver.org/cgi-bin/mapserv.exe?map=/ms4w/apps/tutorial/htdocs/example1-4.map&layer=states_poly&layer=states_line&mode=map
this is the example from Mapserver
Now I'm using database(postgreSQL), but not a shape file. How can I add the charactors then?
Here is a part of my mapfile:
LAYER
CONNECTIONTYPE postgis
NAME "state"
//Connect to a remote spatial database
CONNECTION "user=postgres dbname=*** host=*** password=***"
PROCESSING "CLOSE_CONNECTION=DEFER"
DATA "the_geom from province"
STATUS ON
TYPE POLYGON
CLASS
STYLE
COLOR 122 122 122
OUTLINECOLOR 0 0 0
END
LABEL
COLOR 132 31 31
SHADOWCOLOR 218 218 218
SHADOWSIZE 2 2
TYPE TURETYPE
FONT arial-bold
SIZE 12
ANTIALIAS TRUE
POSITION CL
PARTIALS FALSE
MINDISTANCE 300
BUFFER 4
END
END
END
Some said adding a "TEXT ([*])" in "LABEL", but I don't know howto?
Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

You should use the LABELITEM directive with the name of the table's field containing the text you want to render:
...
DATA "the_geom from province"
LABELITEM "<field_name>"
STATUS ON
...
Check the map file documentation for further details
http://mapserver.org/mapfile/layer.html

Answer 2

The amercader's answer above is quite correct. However, I solved it from amercader's help, but a bit differences, just using subquery.
Here is a sectional code:
LAYER
CONNECTIONTYPE postgis
NAME "state"
//# Connect to a remote spatial database
CONNECTION "user=postgres dbname=*** host=*** password=***"
PROCESSING "CLOSE_CONNECTION=DEFER"
DATA "the_geom from (select gid, the_geom, name from province) as subquery using unique gid using srid=4326"
STATUS ON
TYPE POLYGON
LABELITEM "name"
CLASS
STYLE
...
END
LABEL
...
END
END
END
The key point is "data" attribute, adding a subquery; as well as the "labelitem"'s parameter must be the same as selecting in subquery.
amercader told me that the subquery is unnecessary (see comments). It's cool!
I hope these words can give a helping hand to other programmers using the mapserver.
And thanks amercader.