extension request: widget to connect to Django

[cccs-ip]

Greetings, Kartoza team!

It's always great to speak with you. Thanks for your time.

We discussed on the phone that our next area of focus would be to create a widget that would allow us to present different maps for integration within a django web framework. I am opening this issue as a reminder of that discussion.

I am curious as to how we can / should organize maps on the back end for different presentations on the front end. That is, should we keep a separate QGIS file (*.qgis) for each different map we'd like to maintain on the front end? Or will we be using some sort of presentation layer to select out only those elements relevant to a specific map? For example, if we have a 'master' qgis file with all our layers in it, but I wanted to show one map focusing on natural resources availability and another one focusing on infrastructure locations, would it be best to make 2 different *.qgis maps or just to use one?

[gubuntu]

I've edited Admire's comment from 17 Oct here and am moving the discussion back here as requested. After reading that you'll see there are several elements that you can deploy in whatever combination you feel comfortable with, to publish map layers:

1. one QGIS project containing all layers
2. multiple QGIS projects, each with a different set of layers
3. QGIS 'sub' projects where styling takes place, whose layers are embedded in the projects that actually get published.

Hopefully you are clear about how to work with these.

If you aim to use the QGIS web client to publish a 'map' corresponding to a QGIS project then you should publish a QGIS project that is set up as you wish it to appear in the QGIS web client application.

For all other web maps, including those you create with the Django WMS client, you will be choosing combinations of individual layers from the WMS services available.

At the moment the Django WMS client will choose all the layers from one QGIS project (exposed as a WMS service URI) OR, if you specify the layers, you can compose a map with a subset of the layers, in the order of your choice.

We propose extending the Django WMS client to allow you to:

1. compose a map from layers coming from more than one WMS service
2. save the map as an object (such as an OGC web map context (WMC) document) so it can be shared and edited

Then you will have complete flexibility in configuring WMS services via QGIS projects and composing maps on the client side.

Please let us know if we should proceed with this or if you require any clarification.