Book Image

Mastering Geospatial Development with QGIS 3.x - Third Edition

By : Shammunul Islam, Simon Miles, Kurt Menke, GISP, Richard Smith Jr., GISP, Luigi Pirelli, John Van Hoesen, GISP
Book Image

Mastering Geospatial Development with QGIS 3.x - Third Edition

By: Shammunul Islam, Simon Miles, Kurt Menke, GISP, Richard Smith Jr., GISP, Luigi Pirelli, John Van Hoesen, GISP

Overview of this book

QGIS is an open source solution to GIS and widely used by GIS professionals all over the world. It is the leading alternative to proprietary GIS software. Although QGIS is described as intuitive, it is also, by default, complex. Knowing which tools to use and how to apply them is essential to producing valuable deliverables on time. Starting with a refresher on the QGIS basics and getting you acquainted with the latest QGIS 3.6 updates, this book will take you all the way through to teaching you how to create a spatial database and a GeoPackage. Next, you will learn how to style raster and vector data by choosing and managing different colors. The book will then focus on processing raster and vector data. You will be then taught advanced applications, such as creating and editing vector data. Along with that, you will also learn about the newly updated Processing Toolbox, which will help you develop the advanced data visualizations. The book will then explain to you the graphic modeler, how to create QGIS plugins with PyQGIS, and how to integrate Python analysis scripts with QGIS. By the end of the book, you will understand how to work with all aspects of QGIS and will be ready to use it for any type of GIS work.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
About Packt
Contributors
Preface
Index

Creating a plugin structure with Plugin Builder


A QGIS plugin can be created manually with a simple editor, but the simplest and most complete way to start to create a plugin is to use another Python plugin called Plugin Builder.

Plugin Builder generates the file infrastructure of the plugin, thus avoiding writing repetitive code. Plugin Builder creates only a basic and generic plugin, which can be modified to add specific user functionalities.

It will generate a generic plugin with the following GUI:

This is an almost empty dialog with two buttons. Every piece of this interface can be modified and customized to achieve the plugin's goal.

Installing Plugin Builder

The first step is to install Plugin Builder using the Plugin Manager by navigating to Plugins | Manage and Install Plugins....

Locating plugins

The Plugin Builder, as every third-party Python plugin is by default, is installed in your home directory at the following path:

<your homepath>/ AppData/Roaming/QGIS/QGIS3/profiles/default...