Preface

Welcome to Learning QGIS 2.0. This book aims to introduce you to QGIS 2 and how to perform core geospatial tasks using this popular open source GIS. It takes you through five chapters, from QGIS installation and setup in the first chapter, to the essentials of viewing spatial data in the second chapter. The third chapter covers data creation and editing, followed by the fourth chapter, which offers an introduction to performing spatial analysis in QGIS. In the final chapter, you will learn how to create great maps and how to prepare them for print.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Getting Started with QGIS, covers the installation and configuration of QGIS. We will also get to know the user interface and how to customize it. By the end of this chapter, you will have QGIS running on your machine and be ready to start with the tutorials.

Chapter 2, Viewing Spatial Data, covers how to view spatial data from different data sources. QGIS supports many file and database formats as well as OGC web services. We will first see how we can load layers from these different data sources. Then, we will look into the basics of styling both vector and raster layers and will create our first map. We will finish this chapter with an example for loading background maps from online services.

Chapter 3, Data Creation and Editing, covers the creation of new vector layers. Then, we will cover how to select features and take measurements before we continue with editing feature geometries and attributes. We will then reproject vector and raster data and learn how to convert between different file formats before we end this chapter with joining data from text files and spreadsheets to our spatial data.

Chapter 4, Spatial Analysis, covers raster processing and analysis tasks such as clipping and terrain analysis. Then, we cover converting between raster and vector formats before we continue with common vector geoprocessing tasks such as generating heatmaps and calculating area shares within a region. Finally, we will finish the chapter with an exercise in automating a geoprocessing workflow using the QGIS Processing modeler.

Chapter 5, Creating Great Maps, covers important features that enable us to create great maps. We will go into advanced vector styling, building on what we learned in Chapter 2, Viewing Spatial Data. Then, we will cover labeling using examples of labeling point locations as well as creating more advanced road labels with road shield graphics. We will also cover how to tweak labels manually. Finally, we will get to know the print composer and how to use it to create printable maps and map books.

Who this book is for

This book is for users, developers, and consultants who know the basic functions and processes of GIS, but want to know how to use QGIS to achieve the results they are used to from other GIS. This book is not intended to be a GIS textbook. The reader is expected to be comfortable with core GIS concepts.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows: "use [% $now %] to insert the current time stamp."

A block of code is set as follows:

( landcover@1 > 0 AND landcover@1 <= 6 ) * 100
+ ( landcover@1 >= 7 AND landcover@1 <= 10 ) * 101
+ ( landcover@1 >= 11 ) * 102

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

sudo apt-get install qgis python-qgis qgis-plugin-grass

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen".

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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