QGIS Server, QGIS Web Client And QGIS Cloud

Andreas Neumann (City of Uster, Switzerland) with Marco Hugentobler (Sourcepole AG)

15:00 on Thursday 19th September (in Session 10, starting at 2:30 p.m., Auditorium)

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Description: The aim of the QGIS suite is to provide, next to QGIS Desktop, a web client, a mobile client and OGC geoservices, all from a single project file. This presentation demonstrates recent developments in QGIS server and QGIS web client, and also demonstrates how a QGIS project can be published in the QGIS cloud.
Abstract:

The QGIS project started with a Desktop viewer, then mutated in a Desktop-GIS and now further evolves into a GIS suite, offering a Desktop-GIS, a server (currently WMS and WFS), web clients (QGIS web client, Lizmap) and a cloud service (QGIS cloud). In addition there are experimental versions for QGIS mobile (Android) and QGIS globe for 3d views. The philosophy behind all these offerings is central configuration (all of these services use the same project file) and ease of use (most of the settings can be defined in the QGIS Desktop project settings). This presentation demonstrates the recent developments in QGIS server and QGIS web client and also demonstrates how a QGIS project can be published in the QGIS cloud. The most-interesting feature of QGIS is server is the re-use of QGIS desktop configurations for the web and for web services, which is a real time saver for administrators of smaller GIS infrastructures. There is no need to reconfigure the same data for different publication methods and services. The same metadata, coordinate system definitions, map extents, layer set, symbology and labeling, print composer layouts and layouts are offered regardless of the publication media or client. New developments in QGIS server: * introduction of a proprietary GetProjectSettings command which extends the GetCapabilities response to transport project information to a web client * attributes can be selectively hidden from WMS or WFS * print layouts can be hidden from QGIS server * layers can be published as WFS. For each layer, the administrator can define whether the WFS layer is read-only or transactional. * per layer transparency definable for each WMS request * easy filtering and selection of features without the need to create complex SLD structures * legend configuration options for legend graphics customization QGIS web client is based on OpenLayers, ExtJS and GeoExt. It uses the standard WMS requests like GetMap, GetFeatureInfo and GetLegendGraphics, but also proprietary extensions like GetProjectSettings and GetPrint. The current feature set includes viewing and navigation of map extents, feature info querying with feature highlighting, tooltips (on mouse over) and popups (on mouse-click), geographic search, printing (through PDF), measuring length and area and viewing legends. Recent improvements include: * viewing of metadata * layer reordering * setting layer opacity * map theme switcher * permalink with optional URL shortener Samples for QGIS web client in a production environments can be seen at [4], [5] and [6]. For users who want to publish QGIS projects without installing and maintaining their own server environment there is the option to publish QGIS projects to the QGIS cloud [7]. Publically visible projects can be published for free, restricted maps or excessive use are regarded as commercial use that can be ordered as part of an abonnement. A QGIS plugin [8] helps the publisher to upload the project, used styling resources and data files to the QGIS cloud. Links: [1] http://hub.qgis.org/projects/quantum-gis/wiki/QGIS_Server_Tutorial - QGIS server documentation [2] https://github.com/qgis/qgis-web-client - QGIS web client github project page [3] http://hub.qgis.org/projects/qgis-web-client/ - QGIS web client bug tracker [4] http://gis.uster.ch/ - QGIS web client of the City of Uster [5] http://map2.jena.de/kartenportal/kartenportal?format=image/png&visibleLayers=Stadtplan,Adressen - City map of Jena using QGIS web client [6] http://map.geo.gl.ch/ - QGIS web client based geo portal of the Kanton of Glarus [7] http://www.qgiscloud.com/ [8] http://www.qgiscloud.com/en/pages/quickstart