From the course: Learning QGIS

Types of vector data in QGIS - QGIS Tutorial

From the course: Learning QGIS

Start my 1-month free trial

Types of vector data in QGIS

“

- [Instructor] Vector data, meaning data such as points, lines, and polygons are extremely important to QGIS. The bulk of your work will be done using this kind of data. Now, to add that kind of data, we can use the layer, add layer, add vector layer. To add a vector layer, we can choose a file, a directory, a database, or a protocol. File, we can browse to any file we want. So some of the files we can choose are things like ZIP files from GDAL, arch info coverage, that's an old one, DNA, again, another old one, DXF files exported from AutoCAT, comma separated value CSVs which you can open in Excel, all the shape files, personal geo database, we can look at other types of shape files, two types here, because on is an open search version, we have all sorts of geo JSON files, geo packages, GORSS, even KML which is from Google, map info, all sorts of files all the way down to topple JSON and so on. We can even grab a KML, for example, I can add a KML at any time I want. Now for directory, we have different types. We have open file geo database, which is more of a directory control, so file geo databases are basically directories, they're not single files like a shape file. US Census, binary coverages, the old binary coverages we can pick on that directory. Now the database, this is very powerful because what we can do is we can connect directly to Oracle Spatial, or points from ODBC, or an ESRI personal geo database, MS SQL, so that's Microsoft's SQL server is there's a column in there with geography and geometry data types, postgres SQL, we can go in there, again, if there's geometry data types, as well as my SQL. If any of those databases, anything from Oracle to my SQL has spatial data as a column type, we can use that to pull it into our QGIS project. Finally, there's a protocol where we can go to a URL to pull in data, so you can use the HTTP, Google Cloud Storage, or whatever point or particular file, or go directly to a geo JSON. So a geo JSON file, basically is text file that's structured in such a way that we can bring in data. So I can actually go to this URL, so it's nanimo.ca, crime reporting, API, incidence, dot geo JSON, so that's basically a geo JSON file that's streaming directly from their server, giving us all the updated incidence of crime in the area. So if I put that in, choosing type geo JSON right now, and I click add, what will this do is go off to their server and pull that geo JSON data in and then I close the vector manager and there we are. So I used the identify tool here, I can pick on any of these points, or multiple in that case, and let's have a look in our identify results, and you can see that where's the date and time it happened, you can also see the occurrence type, mischief under 5,000, that particular crime, it's a property crime, what location, it's blocked out the actual address, but you know what street it's on, and what hundred block, and so on and what neighborhood it's in. So basically, this geo JSON file is coming down from their server directly, so our vector data, you've seen other types of vector data where we can actually go to our shape files, and drag and drop, say, buildings, and that's a vector data. So that, too, can be added, but sometimes you need to use the layer, add layer, add vector layer, especially when it's coming from a protocol or database, or a directory. It's easier to drag and drop, but sometimes you have to use directory, database, or protocol to get your data into the QGIS project. So once you have your data, you've got it, it's vector data, that's how you add it, and there's a wide array of supported vector types. Everything from shape files, SQL lite, and this all makes QGIS a very useful tool for mapping the analysis of this vector data.

Contents