Set Up QGIS
In this video you’ll continue installing your app components by adding geographic drivers that are part of QGIS.
Before starting this video, you should have PostgreSQL successfully installed with the PostGIS extension. You should have a new GIS enabled database set up named shops. Make sure you remember your PostgreSQL super user account and password.
With our database finished you might be anxious to get your Django site started, and wired up to PostgreSQL with the ORM. With any other project that might be the next step, but in this case we will be using geographic data so we need some software in between.
Because Django will be using GeoDjango, we will need to install at least the following three dependencies:
- GDAL
- GEOS
- PROJ.4
These drivers help GeoDjango translate the map coordinates correctly and understand the projection used to create them.
00:00 Welcome to the third video in our series for building a location-based web app with Django and GeoDjango. You will continue installing your app components by adding geographic drivers that are part of QGIS. Before starting this video, you should have PostgreSQL successfully installed with the PostGIS extension.
00:21
You should have a new GIS-enabled database set up named shops. Make sure you remember your Postgres superuser account and password. With our database finished, you might be anxious to get your Django site started and wired up to PostgreSQL with the ORM. With any other project, that would probably be the next step. But in this case, we will be using geographic data, so we need some software in between.
00:51 Because Django will be using GeoDjango, we will need to install at least the following three dependencies: GDAL, GEOS, and PROJ.4. These drivers help GeoDjango translate the map coordinates correctly and understand the projection used to create them.
01:10
These three dependencies can be installed separately, and you’re welcome to do so if you prefer, with apt-get, homebrew, or another installer. Please see the latest documentation, though, to avoid any trouble.
01:21 If you succeed on your own in getting these drivers individually installed, feel free to skip to the next video. Because I’d like to keep this project simple, and also because it’s a great product, you’re going to install QGIS next, and this includes the installation and setup of these drivers.
01:39 While we won’t be able to go into all the awesome things you can do with QGIS, I urge you to play with it and try your hand at some interesting spatial analysis. At the time of this recording, QGIS does not yet support Python 3.7.
01:54 Since the system I’m on only has Python 3.7 installed, I’m going to take a couple minutes here in this video to install a second copy of Python, version 3.6.
02:04 This won’t interfere with anything I’m coding—it will just get me through the QGIS install painlessly. To install Python 3.6, I just visit the python.org website, locate the latest 3.6 version for my operating system, and complete the install. If you’re on a Windows system, it’s probably safer to reboot after you finish installing a new version of Python.
02:32 Once you have an installation of Python 3.6 on your system, you can now move on to the QGIS installation. Simply visit qgis.org, click the Download button, and get the latest version.
02:48 As of the time of this recording, that version is 3.6.
02:54 Once the download finishes, launch it to unzip the installer.
03:00 Then, launch the installer. You may get a security warning. Just go into your settings and whitelist the executable.
03:17 Then continue with the installation. Notice the message that says QGIS only supports up through Python 3.6 at the present time.
03:30 At this point, you can accept all defaults, agree to the license, and continue with the installation through completion.
03:40 And that wasn’t so bad, right? With minimal effort, you now have PostgreSQL, PostGIS, QGIS, and all of your geographic drivers installed. There’s nothing standing in the way now. It’s time to forge ahead and start our Django project in the next video.
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ColmC on Jan. 24, 2020
If one is developing a project using Docker, how might the above change? You have installed directly to your system in these tutorials.
Thanks.