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.
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.