Book Image

QGIS Python Programming Cookbook, Second Edition - Second Edition

By : Joel Lawhead
Book Image

QGIS Python Programming Cookbook, Second Edition - Second Edition

By: Joel Lawhead

Overview of this book

QGIS is a desktop geographic information system that facilitates data viewing, editing, and analysis. Paired with the most efficient scripting language—Python, we can write effective scripts that extend the core functionality of QGIS. Based on version QGIS 2.18, this book will teach you how to write Python code that works with spatial data to automate geoprocessing tasks in QGIS. It will cover topics such as querying and editing vector data and using raster data. You will also learn to create, edit, and optimize a vector layer for faster queries, reproject a vector layer, reduce the number of vertices in a vector layer without losing critical data, and convert a raster to a vector. Following this, you will work through recipes that will help you compose static maps, create heavily customized maps, and add specialized labels and annotations. As well as this, we’ll also share a few tips and tricks based on different aspects of QGIS.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
QGIS Python Programming Cookbook - Second Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Adding a scale bar to a map


A scale bar is one of the most important elements of a map composition, as it defines the scale of the map to determine the ground distance on the map. The QGIS composer allows you to create several different types of scale bars from a simple text scale ratio to a graphical, double bar scale bar with two measurement systems. In this recipe, we'll create a scale bar that increments in kilometers.

Getting ready

You will need to download the following zipped shapefile and extract it to your qgis_data directory in a subdirectory named ms:

https://github.com/GeospatialPython/Learn/raw/master/mississippi.zip

https://github.com/GeospatialPython/Learn/raw/master/Mississippi.zip

In addition to the shapefile, you will also need the MapComposer class. This class encapsulates the boilerplate composer code in a reusable way, to make adding other elements easier. You can download it from https://github.com/GeospatialPython/Learn/raw/master/MapComposer.py.

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