Book Image

QGIS Python Programming Cookbook

Book Image

QGIS Python Programming Cookbook

Overview of this book

Table of Contents (16 chapters)
QGIS Python Programming Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Loading a vector layer from a file sample


This recipe describes the most common type of data used in QGIS, a file. In most cases, you'll start a QGIS project by loading a shapefile.

Getting ready

For ease of following the examples in this book, it is recommended that you create a directory called qgis_data in your root or user directory, which provides a short pathname. This setup will help prevent the occurrence of any frustrating errors resulting from path-related issues on a given system. In this recipe and others, we'll use a point shapefile of New York City museums, which you can download from https://geospatialpython.googlecode.com/svn/NYC_MUSEUMS_GEO.zip.

Unzip this file and place the shapfile's contents in a directory named nyc within your qgis_data directory.

How to do it...

Now, we'll walk through the steps of loading a shapefile and adding it to the map, as follows:

  1. Start QGIS.

  2. From the Plugins menu, select Python Console.

  3. In the Python console, create the layer:

    layer = QgsVectorLayer...