[QGIS-Developer] Docs/Instructions for Filter/Query Builder

[Nyall Dawson]

On Sun, 24 Oct 2021 at 19:56, Richard Duivenvoorde <rdmailings at duif.net> wrote:
>
> Hi Harrissou,
>
> Indeed this is the dialog that you got when you had a WFS layer in earlier versions like 3.16:
> https://docs.qgis.org/testing/en/docs/user_manual/working_with_vector/vector_properties.html#id14
>
> But now you get the SQL Query Composer (see screenshot)

Hmm, aside from your UX concerns that dialog needs a cleanup in
general. The alignment is all off and it uses that weird Qt toolbox
widget which we don't use elsewhere (for good reasons... it's ugly and
non-standard :P ). There's also a bunch of HIG capitalization issues
(combo box values should be title case ("Spatial predicates"->"Spatial
Predicates",) labels should be sentence case ("SQL Statement" -> "SQL
statement")). And the SQL statement widget should be using the
QgsCodeEditorSQL widget to get proper formatting of the expression.

But in regards to the UX issue... maybe what we need is some
toggle/tabbed control between "simple" and "SQL builder" or the
like...

Nyall



>
> To see, get the 'provincies' layer from WFS:
> https://geodata.nationaalgeoregister.nl/bestuurlijkegrenzen/wfs
> and in legend click 'Filter',
> which (and that's my point) is very, very technical for average users (I think).
>
> https://docs.qgis.org/testing/en/docs/user_manual/plugins/core_plugins/plugins_db_manager.html#working-with-the-sql-window is another one but that one IS for databases, while the 'FILTER' was just for simple filters...
>
> Regards,
>
> Richard Duivenvoorde
>
> ps sorry, I missed your reply as apparently my subscription was postponed because of bouncing...
>
>
> Le 23/10/2021 à 14:02, Richard Duivenvoorde a écrit :
> > I've just been asked by some average QGIS user (unknown to SQL queries) how to create a simple filter like cityname='foo' for a vector layer.
> >
> > That was almost impossible for that person, unaware of SQL...
> > We could not find any part of documentation for the SQL Query Builder dialog, and we also couldn't find the old (more user oriented) 'query builder' anymore (which does have documentation).
>
> I'm not aware of any removal of this kind of info in the docs in the
> recent years.
>
>  From the layer properties, Source tab, Query builder dialog (or
> ctrl+F), I can still access
> https://docs.qgis.org/testing/en/docs/user_manual/working_with_vector/vector_properties.html#query-builder.
> Is that one you were looking for? (OK, not really SQL but if the user
> accepts to first load the layer, this should address most of the cases).
>
> There's also the SQL filter from DBManager
> (https://docs.qgis.org/testing/en/docs/user_manual/plugins/core_plugins/plugins_db_manager.html#working-with-the-sql-window)
> whose features, from my understanding, are meant to be brought to the
> Browser new SQL builder. Just not yet finished...
>
> Regards,
>
> Harrissou
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