This course focuses on providing GIS professionals with the ability to automate GIS processes to improve performance, accuracy, and provide capabilities not available through standard GIS tools.
The course only requires an installation of QGIS (a free download), although it is not a beginner course. Some knowledge of both QGIS and Python is required. If you want to brush up on either QGIS or Python, you can do this through my courses Survey of Python for GIS Applications and QGIS 3.0 for GIS Professionals. (Both also available for $9.99 until the end of September 2019).
The course does not cover more advanced programming techniques required to develop QGIS plug-ins with advanced user interface capabilities.
Thanks for your interest in my new course on Python for GIS applications. This course is intended to provide a broad overview of the python programming language and the python ecosystem, especially for geospatial applications. The goal is to provide you with an understanding of how all the pieces work together and provide a starting point from which you can explore specific packages on your own. Continue reading “New Course: Survey of python for GIS applications”
Learn how to develop your own HTML5 GPS data collection applications that work like a native app on your mobile device. While there are many canned options available for mobile data collection that may meet your needs, there are also many times when it may make sense to develop your own for the following reasons. Continue reading “New Course: Mobile GIS data collection apps”
Server-side web GIS applications allow you to build secure, web-based portals to your GIS data that allow display, analysis, and editing of GIS data from anywhere there is an internet connection. This is demonstrated with open-source software so that the concepts are accessible to everyone without cost. If you prefer to use commercial software I think you will still benefit from this course as the core concepts apply to both.
Static GIS data can be displayed in a web map with a JavaScript mapping API such as Leaflet (used in this course), OpenLayers, or Google Maps. Powerful analysis of that data can be performed on the client computer using the Turf.js JavaScript library. But if you need the ability to make changes to that data or view changes made by others in real time you need to access a common data store on a server. We will be using PostGIS, a spatial extension to the PostgreSQL database as the common data store. The concepts you learn will be applicable to other databases as well. You can learn most of what you need to store and analyze spatial data with PostGIS in my course “Introduction to spatial databases with PostGIS and QGIS“.
This course builds on the environmental consulting application that was built in the course “Display and analyze GIS data on the web with Leaflet“. The first part of the course is focused on building a secure portal that will allow the projects client to view, filter, search, and analyze both spatial and non-spatial data from the web. We start with the secure portal that we built in my course “PHP registration, login, and registration system” to prevent unauthorized access to the client’s data. Then we modify the client-side application to work with data stored in PostGIS rather than from static GeoJSON files. All of the searching, filtering, and analysis functionality is moved to the server so that any changes made to the database are immediately available to the client.
In the second part of the course we create a second secure portal for project managers. This contains all the functionality available on the client portal but will also allow creating new data, modifying existing data, and deleting data from a web application. A leaflet plugin called Leaflet-PM is used to handle the editing of spatial geometries on the client. Those changes are then sent to the database using standard SQL INSERT and UPDATE statements.
Because this course builds on so many other technologies and thus has so many prerequisites I am making all my courses available until the end of July for only $15 each. All the links on this page as well as those on my courses page will reflect this discount. Other pages on this site will not but you can always enter the coupon code “JULYSALE” to get that discount.
This course has over 15 hours of content and is available now on Udemy.com for only $15 until the end of july. As with all my courses, more will be added as I get a chance. More information can be seen in the video below.
One of the most frequent questions I get about web programming for GIS is “how do I control access to my web maps and protect my data?”. Its a very important question for web GIS applications that allow online editing because you certainly would not want everybody with internet access to be able to edit your GIS data. Even if your web application doesn’t provide editing capabilities there is often a need to control access to it. Some data may be sensitive, such as the location of endangered species activity or critical infrastructure. Other data is proprietary information that cost you or your client a lot of money to collect and thus you need to prevent competitors from accessing it. Continue reading “New Course: PHP registration, login, and content management system”
Thanks for your interest in this course. I’m very excited to release it as I believe that the combination of QGIS 3.0 and PostGIS amounts to an open-source “Killer App”. It solves many frustrating problems that I had to deal with throughout my career as the GIS specialist for small to medium sized environmental consulting companies. I think it is equally applicable to any organization that is outgrowing single-user desktop GIS but unable to pay the ten’s of thousands of dollars required to move into multi-user enterprise databases with commercial GIS software. It took quite a bit of effort to learn how to do this on my own and my hope, as always, is to help others navigate this technology without repeating the mistakes I made. Continue reading “New Course: Introduction to spatial databases with PostGIS and QGIS”
It’s a great time to be a GIS Professional. The industry is booming, ArcGIS Pro is a complete overhaul of ESRI’s desktop GIS product. Radian Studio is busy rewriting GIS algorithms to take advantage of massively parallel processing in modern computer architectures that can make short work of computer intensive spatial operations. Meanwhile in the open source world, the community of QGIS users is very close to releasing a major new version in QGIS 3.0. Continue reading “New Course: QGIS 3.0 for GIS Professionals”
