Django is an excellent web framework that allows for excellent integration of geospatial data with other database functionality. The built-in development server is excellent during the development phase and is exceptionally easy to configure, but cannot handle concurrent connections and therefore cannot be used in a production environment. Apache is one of the most commonly… Read more »

When developing a Django application, one of the first steps is to run the django-admin startproject command from the terminal window. In a Windows environment this can lead to the following error: ‘django-admin’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.   To fix this, first close the terminal… Read more »

Part 1 Understanding and creating a new plugin framework QGIS 3.0 can be extended with a wide range of functionality using plugins. While there are thousands of plugins available in the Plugin manager, it is often necessary or advantageous to create your own plugins to automate common tasks or add extra functionality to a workflow.… Read more »

Developing plugins and other Python scripts can be a daunting task for the uninitiated. Using an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) like PyCharm can help keep everything in one place and even integrates version control systems like Git. Unfortunately, unlike ArcPy you can’t just set the interpreter to the included Python 3.7 installation for QGIS and… Read more »

Developing plugins and other Python scripts can be a daunting task for the uninitiated. Using an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) like PyCharm can help keep everything in one place and even integrates version control systems like Git. Unfortunately, unlike ArcPy you can’t just set the interpreter to the included Python 3.7 installation for QGIS and… Read more »

Mapbox has an excellent tiling service that has both a ton of basemaps and an easy-to-use mapping system for web applications. It is possible to use their tiles in QGIS as a basemap. The steps are relatively simple and will be covered below. Create a Mapbox account by going to www.mapbox.com. Login in and create… Read more »

Web based basemaps can provide an excellent context for a mapping project. Map services such as OpenStreetMap and Bing provide tile services that can be used to fill in details such as topography, road networks, hydrography and satellite imagery for a map without having to provide your own set of base features. Quick note on… Read more »

In larger work environments it becomes essential to be able to assign similar permissions to groups of people for the database environment. PostgreSQL has a built in authentication system that easily allows for this. As with the rest of this documentation, this section assumes a PostgreSQL installation on a Debian based Linux distribution. We use… Read more »

This document uses Ubuntu 18.10 in conjunction with PostgreSQL 10 with PostGIS. Similar concepts should apply to other installations. It assumes PostgreSQL has been installed with the PostGIS extensions already. Initializing the database to run on server startup Either open the terminal in your Linux server or open an SSH session to your server and… Read more »