Nyall Dawson | nyalldawson.net

2-December-2015

By Nyall Dawson QGIS

Exploring variables in QGIS 2.12, part 1

It’s been quite some time since I last had a chance to blog and a lot has happened since then. Not least of which is that QGIS 2.12 has now been released with a ton of new features that I’ve neglected to write about! To try and get things moving along here again I’m planning on writing a short series exploring how variables work in QGIS 2.12 and the exciting possibilities they unlock. First, let’s look into how variables can be used with QGIS map composer…

So, let’s get started! A new concept introduced in QGIS 2.12 is the ability to set custom variables for use in QGIS’ expression engine. The easiest way to do this is through the “Project Properties” dialog, under the “Variables” section:

Default project variables

You’ll see in the screenshot above that a blank project includes a number of read-only preset variables, such as @project_path and @project_title. (All variables in QGIS are prefixed with an @ character to differentiate them from fields or functions). You can add your own variables to this list by clicking the + button, as shown below:

Adding new variables to a project

Here I’ve added some new variables, @project_version and @author. Now, any of these variables can be used anywhere that you can use expressions in QGIS, including the field calculator, data defined symbology, labelling, map composer text, etc. So, you could make a map composer template with a label that includes the @author, @project_version and @project_path variables:

Variables in a composer label

Sure, you *could* also manually enter all these details directly into the label for the same result. But what happens when you have multiple composers in your project, and need to update the version number in all of them? Or you move your project to a new folder and need to make sure the path is updated accordingly? Manually updating multiple composers is a pain – make QGIS do the work for you and instead use variables! This would especially be helpful if you’re saving map composer templates for use across multiple projects or users. Using variables will ensure that the template is automatically updated with the right details for the current project.

Another neat thing about QGIS variables is that they can be inherited and overridden, just like CSS rules. Opening the options dialog will also show a Variables group for setting “Global” variables. These variables are always available for your QGIS installation, regardless of what project you’re working on at the time. If your workplace tends to reorganise a lot and constantly shuffle your department around, you could add a global variable for @work_department, so that changing the global variable value in one place will automatically filter through to any existing and future projects you have.

Global variables

And like I mentioned earlier, these variables are inherited through various “contexts” within QGIS. If I reopen the Project Properties dialog, you’ll see that a project has access to all the global variables plus the variables set within that specific project. In addition, by adding a variable with the same name to the Project variables the value of the Global variable will be overridden:

Overridden variables

There’s also a variable editor within each individual composer’s properties tab, so variables can also be set and overridden on a composer-by-composer basis within a project. It’s a really flexible and powerful approach which both simplifies workflows and also opens up lots of new possibilities.

Stay tuned for more on this topic – this topic has only just scratched the surface of how expression variables have changed QGIS! (You can also read part 2 and part 3)

Tagged 2.12, composer, geospatial, osgeo, qgis

20-July-2015

10 Comments

By Nyall Dawson QGIS

Recent labelling improvements in QGIS master

If you’re not like me and don’t keep a constant eye over at QGIS development change log (be careful – it’s addictive!), then you’re probably not aware of a bunch of labelling improvements which recently landed in QGIS master version. I’ve been working recently on a large project which involves a lot (>300) of atlas map outputs, and due to the size of this project it’s not feasible to manually tweak placements of labels. So, I’ve been totally at the mercy of QGIS’ labelling engine for automatic label placements. Generally it’s quite good but there were a few things missing which would help this project. Fortunately, due to the open-source nature of QGIS, I’ve been able to dig in and enhance the label engine to handle these requirements (insert rhetoric about beauty of open source here!). Let’s take a look at them one-by-one:

Data defined quadrant in “Around Point” placement mode

First up, it’s now possible to specify a data defined quadrant when a point label is set to the Around Point placement mode. In the past, you had a choice of either Around Point mode, in which QGIS automatically places labels around point features in order to maximise the number of labels shown, or the Offset from Point mode, in which all labels are placed at a specified position relative to the points (eg top-left). In Offset from Point mode you could use data defined properties to force labels for a feature to be placed at a specific relative position by binding the quadrant to a field in your data. This allowed you to manually tweak the placement for individual labels, but at the cost of every other label being forced to the same relative position. Now, you’ve also got the option to data define the relative position when in Around Point mode, so that the rest of the labels will fall back to being automatically placed. Here’s a quick example – I’ll start with a layer with labels in Around Point mode:

Around Point placement mode

You can see that some labels are sitting to the top right of the points, others to the bottom right, and some in the top middle, in order to fit all the labels for these points. With this new option, I can setup a data defined quadrant for the labels, and then force the ‘Tottenham’ label (top left of the map) to display below and to the left of the point:

Setting a data-defined quadrant

Here’s what the result looks like:

Manually setting the quadrant for the Tottenham label

The majority of the labels are still auto-placed, but Tottenham is now force to the lower left corner.

Data defined label priority

Another often-requested feature which landed recently is the ability to set the priority for individual labels. QGIS has long had the ability to set the priority for an entire labelling layer, but you couldn’t control the priority of features within a layer. That would lead to situations like that shown below, where the most important central station (the green point) hasn’t been labelled:

What… no label for the largest station in Melbourne?

By setting a data defined priority for labels, I can set the priority either via values manually entered in a field or by taking advantage of an existing “number of passengers” field present in my data. End result is that this central station is now prioritised over any others:

Much better! (in case you’re wondering… I’ve manually forced some other non-optimal placement settings for illustrative purposes!)

Obstacle only layers

The third new labelling feature is the option for “Obstacle only” layers. What this option does is allow a non-labelled layer to act as an obstacle for the labels in other layers, so they will be discouraged from drawing labels over the features in the obstacle layer. Again, it’s best demonstrated with an example. Here’s my stations layer with labels placed automatically – you can see that some labels are placed right over the features in the rail lines layer:

Labels over rail lines…

Now, let’s set the rail lines layer to act as an obstacle for other labels:

… setting the layer as an obstacle…

The result is that labels will be placed so that they don’t cover the rail lines anymore! (Unless there’s no other choice). Much nicer.

No more clashing labels!

Control over how polygons act as obstacles for labels

This change is something I’m really pleased about. It’s only applicable for certain situations, but when it works the improvements are dramatic.

Let’s start with my labelled stations map, this time with an administrative boundary layer in the background:

Stations with administrative boundaries

Notice anything wrong with this map? If you’re like me, you won’t be able to look past those labels which cross over the admin borders. Yuck. What’s happening here is that although my administrative regions layer is set to discourage labels being placed over features, there’s actually nowhere that labels can possibly be placed which will avoid this. The admin layer covers the entire map, so regardless of where the labels are placed they will always cover an administrative polygon feature. This is where the new option to control how polygon layers act as obstacles comes to the rescue:

…change a quick setting…

Now, I can set the administrative layer to only avoid placing labels over feature’s boundaries! I don’t care that they’ll still be placed inside the features (since we have no choice!), but I don’t want them sitting on top of these boundaries. The result is a big improvement:

Much better!

Now, QGIS has avoided placing labels over the boundaries between regions. Better auto-placement of labels like this means much less time required manually tweaking their positioning, and that’s always a good thing!

Draw only labels which fit inside a polygon

The last change is fairly self explanatory, so no nice screenshots here. QGIS now has the ability to prevent drawing labels which are too large to fit inside their corresponding polygon features. Again, in certain circumstances this can make a huge cartographic improvement to your map.

So there you go. Lots of new labelling goodies to look forward to when QGIS 2.12 rolls around.

Tagged 2.12, cartography, geospatial, labelling, osgeo, qgis

9-July-2015

1 Comment

By Nyall Dawson QGIS

Want to sponsor some QGIS features? Here’s some ideas…

I’ve been working on QGIS for a number of years now and, contrary to what I thought when I started, my wishlist seems to grow longer with every feature I add to QGIS! Unfortunately, almost all of my QGIS development work is done on a volunteer basis and it’s sometimes hard to justify the time required to tackle items on this list. So here’s your chance to help me fix this!

Here’s a quick list of things which I’d love to add to QGIS (or improve), but would need someone to step up and help sponsor their development:

Raster marker symbol type: Currently QGIS supports a number of marker symbol types (simple markers, font markers, SVG markers) but there’s no option to just use a raster image file for a symbol. A few versions back I added support for a raster image fill type, and now I’d love to do the same for markers. Options could include overriding the image size, rotation and opacity. And of course, all of these properties would be data-definable.
Paint effects for diagrams: The successful Kickstarter campaign meant that QGIS 2.10 includes a powerful framework for applying live effects to layers, including drop shadows, outer glows, blurs, and colour effects (plus lots of others!). I’d like to take this framework and allow effects to be applied to diagrams on a layer. Drop shadows and outer glows would really help aid the readability of diagrams by allowing them to sit on a different visual layer to the rest of the map. The effects framework was designed to allow reuse across all of QGIS, and diagrams would be the next logical step in this.
Layer effects for diagrams! (Well… a mockup of them…)
Additional diagram types/options: While we’re on the topic of diagrams, there’s lots more that we could do with QGIS’ diagram support. We’ve currently got support for pie charts, text diagrams and histograms, but there’s a lot of really nice diagram styles which we don’t yet support. Everybody loves infographics with nicely designed diagrams… so I’d love the chance to extend what’s possible using QGIS diagram engine. Some ideas include icon arrays, circle packing.
Adding a geometry widget in the attribute table: This feature has been on my mind a lot lately. What I’d like to add is a new “geometry widget” as the last column in a layer’s attribute table. This widget would allow you to do all sorts of modifications to the geometry attached to a feature. Possible options include clearing the geometry (resetting it to null), copying the geometry as WKT or GeoJSON, or pasting geometry into the feature from a WKT string (making it super easy to copy the geometry between features). This could also be extended in future to start incorporating the editing capabilities current possible through the Plain Geometry Editor plugin.
Poor quality mockup of a geometry widget…
Options for non square/straight line legend patches: QGIS’ legend currently has no options for customising the shape of legend patches. Polygon layers in the legend are rectangles, line layers are straight lines — that’s it. There’s lots of room for improvement here. I’d like to add options for shapes such as circles, rounded rectangles, jagged lines, and possibly even custom shapes (via a WKT string or something similar).
Custom legend shapes anyone?
Improving the heatmap plugin: The current heatmap plugin needs some love. The code and UI could do with a big refresh. I’d love a chance to totally revamp this plugin and move it into QGIS core code, and allow it to be used from within processing models. I’d also like to add additional hotspot techniques, such as Getis Ord Gi* hotspotting, to the plugin.
Extending the raster calculator: QGIS’ raster calculator was given a bunch of needed fixes and improvements in 2.10, but there’s more we could do. The major limitation with the calculator is that it currently only supports functions with at most two parameters. This needs to be fixed so that we can add a bunch of much desired functions to the calculator – eg min, max, avg, coalesce, if, etc… Lack of support for multi-parameter functions is really holding back what’s possible in the calculator.

Of course, this list is just a start. I’m always keen to chat about any other features you’d like to see added to QGIS (or even tackle specific pet-hate bugs or frustrations!). Just drop me an email at nyall.dawson@gmail.com to discuss.

Oh, one last thing – I’m in the process of preparing for my next crowd funded feature for QGIS – and this one is big! More on that shortly.

Tagged diagrams, effects, geospatial, osgeo, qgis

4-July-2015

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By Nyall Dawson QGIS

Customising the TimeManager time stamp

TimeManager is a fantastic plugin for QGIS which allows you to create animated maps from your data. You can read all about it here and here, and there’s a really nice demonstration of it here.

I’ve been playing with TimeManager a fair bit over the last month, and thought I’d share a quick tip on improving the appearance of TimeManager’s time stamp. TimeManager includes some basic functionality for placing a time stamp in the corner of your outputs, but it’s fairly limited. There’s only some basic appearance options, and no way to control the date or time formats displayed.

Default TimeManager time stamp

But, there’s a trick we can use to get around this: use a temporary point layer for the time stamp label. Let me elaborate:

Create a throwaway point layer. It doesn’t matter what fields or format this layer has.
Add a single point feature to this layer at the place you’d like the improved time stamp to appear at.
…add a single point feature
We don’t want to see the marker, so hide the symbol for this layer by setting it to use a transparent fill and outline.
Transparent fill and outline
Then, enable labels for this layer. Here’s the trick – set the label expression for the label to use “animation_datetime()” (or for QGIS 2.8, “$animation_datetime”). This is a custom function provided by the TimeManager plugin which evaluates to the current frame’s date and time.
Setting the layer’s label expression
Now, you can use all the built-in options within QGIS for styling this label. Buffers, drop shadows, background shapes… anything!
…tweaking the label appearance
Apply and check. Much nicer!
A nicely formatted time stamp
To tweak the formatting of the time stamp’s date and time, you can modify the label expression using the built-in ‘format_date’, ‘year’, ‘month’, etc functions. Let’s try “format_date(animation_datetime(),’ddd dd MMM yyyy’)”:
Tweaked expression

Now, our final formatted time stamp looks like this:

Final, formatted time stamp

…and there we go. Using this simple trick allows you to take advantage of all the possibilities which the QGIS labelling and expression engines allow!

*Bonus points for the first person to use this technique along with data defined controls for animating the label colour/size!

Tagged animations, geospatial, labelling, osgeo, qgis, timemanager

20-April-2015

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By Nyall Dawson Books, QGIS

Review: Building Mapping Applications with QGIS

It seems like over the last year the amount of literature published regarding QGIS has really exploded. In the past few months alone there’s been at least three titles I can think of (Building Mapping Applications with QGIS, Mastering QGIS, and the QGIS Python Programming Cookbook). I think this is a great sign of a healthy project. Judging by this there’s certainly a lot of demand for quality guides and documentation for QGIS.

I recently finished reading one of these titles – Building Mapping Applications with QGIS. (Erik Westra, Packt Publishing 2015) In short, I’m a huge fan of this work and think it may be my favourite QGIS book to date! I’ve read Erik’s previous work, Python Geospatial Development, and thought it was an entertaining and really well written book. He’s clearly got an in-depth knowledge about what he’s writing about and this confidence comes through in his writing. So when I first saw this title announced I knew it would be a must-read for me.

In Building Mapping Applications with QGIS, Erik has created a comprehensive guide through all the steps required to create QGIS plugins and standalone Python applications which utilise the QGIS libraries. It’s not a beginner’s guide to Python or to PyQGIS, but that’s what helps it stand out. There’s no introductory chapters on programming with Python or how to use QGIS and instead Erik dives straight into the meat of this topic. I found this approach really refreshing, as I’m often frustrated when the first few chapters of an advanced work just cover the basics. Instead, Building Mapping Applications with QGIS is packed with lessons about, well, actually building mapping applications!

So, why do I like this book so much? Personally, I think it fills a a really crucial void in the existing QGIS literature. There’s a lot of works covering using QGIS, and a few covering PyQGIS development (eg, the PyQGIS Programmer’s Guide, which I reviewed here). But to date, there hasn’t been any literature that covers developing QGIS based applications in such great depth. It’s just icing on the cake that Erik’s writing is also so interesting and easy to read.

Is there any criticisms I have with this book? Well, there’s one small omission which I would have liked to see addressed. While the chapter Learning the QGIS Python API goes into some detail about how QGIS is built using the Qt libraries and a great deal of depth about interpreting the QGIS c++ APIs, I think it could really benefit from some discussion about both the PyQt and Qt APIs themselves. Since a lot of the QGIS classes are either directly derived from Qt classes or heavily utilise them it’s really important that PyQGIS developers are also directed to the PyQt and Qt APIs. For instance, the Qt QColor class is used heavily throughout PyQGIS, but you won’t find any API documentation on QColor in QGIS’ API. Instead, you need to first consult the PyQt API docs and also the detailed Qt c++ docs. It’s often that you may think the PyQGIS API is missing a crucial method, but consulting the Qt docs reveals that the method is instead implemented in the base classes. It’s an important point to note for mastering PyQGIS development. To be fair, I’m yet to read a PyQGIS book which has nailed the interaction between the QGIS, PyQt and Qt APIs.

Honestly, that’s a really minor quibble with an otherwise outstanding work. I’m so glad Erik’s written this work and strongly recommend it to anyone wanting to take their PyQGIS development skills to the next level.

Tagged geospatial, osgeo, qgis

8-April-2015

12 Comments

By Nyall Dawson QGIS

Introducing QGIS live layer effects!

I’m pleased to announce that the crowdfunded work on layer effects for QGIS is now complete and available in the current development snapshots! Let’s dive in and explore how these effects work, and check out some of the results possible using them.

I’ll start with a simple polygon layer, with some nice plain styling:

A nice and boring polygon layer

If I open the properties for this layer and switch to the Style tab, there’s a new checkbox for “Draw effects“. Let’s enable that, and then click the little customise effects button to its right:

Enabling effects for the layer

A new “Effects Properties” dialog opens:

Effects Properties dialog

You can see that currently the only effect listed is a “Source” effect. Source effects aren’t particularly exciting – all they do is draw the original layer unchanged. I’m going to change this to a “Blur” effect by clicking the “Effect type” combo box and selecting “Blur“:

Changing to a blur effect

If I apply the settings now, you’ll see that the polygon layer is now blurry. Now we’re getting somewhere!

Blurry polygons!

Ok, so back to the Effects Properties dialog. Let’s try something a bit more advanced. Instead of just a single effect, it’s possible to chain multiple effects together to create different results. Let’s make a traditional drop shadow by adding a “Drop shadow” effect under the “Source” effect:

Setting up a drop shadow

Effects are drawn top-down, so the drop shadow will appear below the source polygons:

Live drop shadows!

Of course, if you really wanted, you could rearrange the effects so that the drop shadow effect is drawn above the source!..

Hmmmm…

You can stack as many effects as you like. Here’s a purple inner glow over a source effect, with a drop shadow below everything:

Inner glow, source, drop shadow…

Now it’s time to get a bit more creative… Let’s explore the “transform” effect. This effect allows you to apply all kinds of transformations to your layer, including scaling, shearing, rotation and translation:

The transform effect

Here’s what the layer looks like if I add a horizontally shearing transform effect above an outer glow effect:

Getting tricky…

Transforms can get really freaky. Here’s what happens if we apply a 180° rotation to a continents layer (with a subtle nod to xkcd):

Change your perspective on the world!

Remember that all these effects are applied when the layers are rendered, so no modifications are made to the underlying data.

Now, there’s one last concept regarding effects which really blasts open what’s possible with them, and that’s “Draw modes“. You’ll notice that this combo box contains a number of choices, including “Render“, “Modify” and “Render and Modify“:

“Draw mode” options

These draw modes control how effects are chained together. It’s easiest to demonstrate how draw modes work with an example, so this time I’ll start with a Transform effect over a Colorise effect. The transform effect is set to a 45° rotation, and the colorise effect set to convert to grayscale. To begin, I’ll set the transform effect to a draw mode of Render only:

The “Render only” draw mode

In this mode, the results of the effect will be drawn but won’t be used to modify the underlying effects:

Rotation effect over the grayscale effect

So what we have here is that the polygon is drawn rotated by 45° by the transform effect, and then underneath that there’s a grayscale copy of the original polygon drawn by the colorise effect. The results of the transform effect have been rendered, but they haven’t affected the underlying colorise effect.

If I instead set the Transform effect’s draw mode to “Modifier only” the results are quite different:

Rotation modifier for grayscale effect

Now, the transform effect is rotating the polygon by 45° but the result is not rendered. Instead, it is passed on to the subsequent colorise effect, so that now the colorise effect draws a grayscale copy of the rotated polygon. Make sense? We could potentially chain a whole stack of modifier effects together to get some great results. Here’s a transform, blur, colorise, and drop shadow effect all chained together using modifier only draw modes:

A stack of modifier effects

The final draw mode, “Render and modify” both renders the effect and applies its result to underlying effects. It’s a combination of the two other modes. Using draw modes to customise the way effects chain is really powerful. Here’s a combination of effects which turn an otherwise flat star marker into something quite different:

Lots of effects!

The last thing I’d like to point out is that effects can be either applied to an entire layer, or to the individual symbol layers for features within a layer. Basically, the possibilities are almost endless! Python plugins can also extend this further by implementing additional effects.

All this work was funded through the 71 generous contributors who donated to the crowdfunding campaign. A big thank you goes out to you all whole made this work possible! I honestly believe that this feature takes QGIS’ cartographic possibilities to whole new levels, and I’m really excited to see the maps which come from it.

Lastly, there’s two other crowdfunding campaigns which are currently in progress. Lutra consulting is crowdfunding for a built in auto trace feature, and Radim’s campaign to extend the functionality of the QGIS GRASS plugin. Please check these out and contribute if you’re interested in their work and would like to see these changes land in QGIS.

Tagged 2.10, cartography, effects, geospatial, kickstarter, osgeo, qgis

11-January-2015

2 Comments

By Nyall Dawson QGIS

QGIS – live layer effects Kickstarter update

Here’s another quick video demonstration of the latest developments in layer effects – effects on polygon and polyline layers, and outer glow effects:

Time is running out to fund this campaign and make this work happen… Please donate via Kickstarter!

I’ve also been asked what will happen if funding exceeds the Kickstarter goal? Well, if this happens, the extra funds will be used to add additional layer effects to QGIS. Next up will be inner glow, inner shadow and color modification effects.

Tagged geospatial, kickstarter, osgeo, qgis

27-December-2014

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By Nyall Dawson QGIS

Kickstarter Alert – Live Layer Effects for QGIS

QGIS is well regarded for its fantastic cartographic abilities – it’s got a huge range of symbology styles and options which can be used to style your maps. But there’s more we can do to push this even further.

One long requested cartographic feature has been for live drop shadows on layers. Why stop there? Why not inner and outer glow effects and live blur effects? Just imagine the cartographic possibilities if this functionality was available from within a GIS, and didn’t require exporting maps to external editors…

I’ve launched a Kickstarter project to fund implementing live layer effects like this within QGIS. Please consider donating or spreading the word if you’d find this feature useful!

Tagged cartography, crowdfund, geospatial, kickstarter, osgeo, qgis

18-November-2014

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By Nyall Dawson QGIS

Exploring QGIS 2.6 – Item panel for map composer

In recent releases QGIS’ map composer has undergone some large usability improvements, such as the ability to select and interact with multiple items, and much improved navigation of compositions. Another massive usability improvement which is included in QGIS 2.6 is the new “Items” panel in the map composer. The panel shows a list of all items currently in the composition, and allows you to individually select, show or hide items, toggle their lock status, and rearrange them via drag and drop. You can also double click the item’s description to modify its ID, which makes managing items in the composition much easier.

QGIS composer’s new items panel

This change has been on my wish list for a long time. The best bit is that implementing the panel has allowed me to fix some of the composer’s other biggest usability issues. For instance, now locked items are no longer selectable in the main composer view. If you’ve ever tried to create fancy compositions with items which are stacked on top of other items, you’ll know that trying to interact with the lower items has been almost impossible in previous QGIS versions. Now, if you lock the higher stacked items you’ll be able to fully interact with all underlying items without the higher items getting in the way. Alternatively you could just temporarily hide them while you work with the lower items.

This feature brings us one more step closer to making QGIS’ map composer a powerful DTP tool in itself. If you’d like to help support further improvements like this in QGIS, please consider sponsoring my development work, or you can contact me directly for a quote on specific development.

Tagged 2.6, composer, geospatial, osgeo, qgis

30-September-2014

2 Comments

By Nyall Dawson QGIS

Creating custom colour schemes in PyQGIS

In my last post I explored some of the new colour related features available in QGIS 2.6. At the end of that post I hinted at the possibility of creating QGIS colour schemes using python. Let’s take a look…

We’ll start with something nice and easy – a colour scheme which contains a predefined set of colours (e.g., standard company colours). This is done by subclassing QgsColorScheme and implementing the required methods ‘schemeName‘, ‘fetchColors‘ and ‘clone‘. It’s all fairly self explanatory – most of the important stuff happens in fetchColors, which returns a list of QColor/string pairs. Here’s a sample:

from PyQt4.QtCore import *
from PyQt4.QtGui import *

class QgsCgaLightColorScheme(QgsColorScheme):
    def __init__(self, parent=None): 
        QgsColorScheme.__init__(self)
 
    def schemeName(self):
        return "CGA Colors!"
 
    def fetchColors(self,context='', basecolor=QColor()):
        return [[QColor('#555555'),'Gray'],
                    [QColor('#5555FF'),'Light Blue'],
                    [QColor('#55FF55'),'Light Green'],
                    [QColor('#55FFFF'),'Light Cyan'],
                    [QColor('#FF5555'),'Light Red'],
                    [QColor('#FF55FF'),'Light Magenta'],
                    [QColor('#FFFF55'),'Yellow'],
                    [QColor('#FFFFFF'),'White']]
    def flags(self):
        return QgsColorScheme.ShowInAllContexts
 
    def clone(self):
        return QgsCgaLightColorScheme()

cgaScheme = QgsCgaLightColorScheme()
QgsColorSchemeRegistry.instance().addColorScheme(cgaScheme)

This scheme will now appear in all colour buttons and colour picker dialogs:

CGA colours… what your map was missing!

If you only wanted the scheme to appear in the colour picker dialog, you’d modify the flags method to return QgsColorScheme.ShowInColorDialog instead.

QgsColorSchemes can also utilise a “base colour” when generating their colour list. Here’s a sample colour scheme which generates slightly randomised variations on the base colour. The magic again happens in the fetchColors method, which copies the hue of the base colour and generates random saturation and value components for the returned colours.

from PyQt4.QtCore import *
from PyQt4.QtGui import *
import random

class QgsRandomColorScheme(QgsColorScheme):
    def __init__(self, parent=None): 
        QgsColorScheme.__init__(self)

    def schemeName(self):
        return "Random colors!"

    def fetchColors(self, context='', basecolor=QColor() ):
        noColors = random.randrange(30)
        minVal = 130;
        maxVal = 255;
        colorList = []
        for i in range(noColors):
            if basecolor.isValid():
                h = basecolor.hue()
            else:
                #generate random hue
                h = random.randrange(360);

            s = random.randrange(100,255)
            v = random.randrange(100,255)

            colorList.append( [ QColor.fromHsv( h, s, v), "random color! " + str(i) ] )

        return colorList

    def flags(self):
        return QgsColorScheme.ShowInAllContexts

    def clone(self):
        return QgsRandomColorScheme()

randomScheme = QgsRandomColorScheme()
QgsColorSchemeRegistry.instance().addColorScheme(randomScheme)

Here’s the random colour scheme in action… note how the colours are all based loosely around the current red base colour.

Randomised colours

You may also have noticed the context argument for fetchColors. This can be used to tweak the returned colour list depending on the context of the colour picker. Possible values include ‘composer‘, ‘symbology‘, ‘gui‘ or ‘labelling‘.

One final fun example… here’s a colour scheme which grabs its colours using the Colour Lovers API to fetch a random popular palette from the site:

from PyQt4.QtCore import *
from PyQt4.QtGui import *
from xml.etree import ElementTree
import urllib2
import random

class colorLoversScheme(QgsColorScheme):

    def __init__(self, parent=None): 
        QgsColorScheme.__init__(self)
        xmlurl = 'http://www.colourlovers.com/api/palettes/top'

        headers = { 'User-Agent' : 'Mozilla/5.0' }
        req = urllib2.Request(xmlurl, None, headers)
        doc = ElementTree.parse(urllib2.urlopen(req)).getroot()

        palettes = doc.findall('palette')
        palette = random.choice(palettes)

        title = palette.find('title').text
        username = palette.find('userName').text
        attrString = title + ' by ' + username
        colors = ['#'+c.text for c in palette.find('colors').findall('hex')]

        self.color_list = [[QColor(c), attrString] for c in colors]

    def schemeName(self):
        return "Color lovers popular palette"

    def fetchColors(self, context='', basecolor=QColor()):
        return self.color_list

    def flags(self):
        return QgsColorScheme.ShowInAllContexts

    def clone(self):
        return colorLoversScheme()

loversScheme = colorLoversScheme()      
QgsColorSchemeRegistry.instance().addColorScheme( loversScheme )

Clicking a colour button will now give us some daily colour scheme inspiration…

Grabbing a palette from the Colours Lovers site

Ok, now it’s over to all you PyQGIS plugin developers – time to go wild!

Tagged 2.6, colour, geospatial, osgeo, qgis

nyalldawson.net

Mapping, QGIS and other Open Source Ramblings

Posted by Nyall Dawson …

Exploring variables in QGIS 2.12, part 1

Recent labelling improvements in QGIS master

Data defined quadrant in “Around Point” placement mode

Data defined label priority

Obstacle only layers

Control over how polygons act as obstacles for labels

Draw only labels which fit inside a polygon

Want to sponsor some QGIS features? Here’s some ideas…

Customising the TimeManager time stamp

Review: Building Mapping Applications with QGIS

Introducing QGIS live layer effects!

QGIS – live layer effects Kickstarter update

Kickstarter Alert – Live Layer Effects for QGIS

Exploring QGIS 2.6 – Item panel for map composer

Creating custom colour schemes in PyQGIS