title: How can I find the attributes of items stored in a WFS Service?
body: <p>I use geoserver and openlayers to display items stored in a postGIS database. Each item has several attributes, e.g. height, width, color, ...
  I request the attribute types using</p>
  <pre><code>$.ajax({
    type: &quot;GET&quot;,
    url: &quot;http://localhost:8080/geoserver/wfs?service=WFS&amp;request=DescribeFeatureType&amp;version=1.1.0&amp;typeName=mytest:all&quot;,
    dataType: &quot;xml&quot;,
    success: function (xml) {
  ...
  </code></pre>
  <p>and get a result like</p>
  <pre><code>&lt;xsd:sequence&gt;
    &lt;xsd:element maxOccurs=&quot;1&quot; minOccurs=&quot;0&quot; name=&quot;height&quot; nillable=&quot;true&quot; type=&quot;xsd:float&quot;/&gt;
    &lt;xsd:element maxOccurs=&quot;1&quot; minOccurs=&quot;0&quot; name=&quot;width&quot; nillable=&quot;true&quot; type=&quot;xsd:float&quot;/&gt;
    &lt;xsd:element maxOccurs=&quot;1&quot; minOccurs=&quot;0&quot; name=&quot;color&quot; nillable=&quot;true&quot; type=&quot;xsd:string&quot;/&gt;
  &lt;/xsd:sequence&gt;
  </code></pre>
  <p>Then I would like to get the values stored for an attribute, e.g. for color so that I can put them in a dropdown box and let the user create a query to find only those items that are yellow. That way, I eliminate typos in the search query that might occur if I would allow entering free text</p>
  <p>Is there a way to do this query?</p>