[Qgis-developer] proposing MetaSearch for QGIS Core

[Marco Hugentobler]

Hi

It will be great to have CSW functionality in QGIS out of the box!

Regards,
Marco

On 04.04.2014 15:30, Tom Kralidis wrote:
> tl; dr: we are proposing MetaSearch for inclusion into QGIS core, to
> help the discovery (download/add, find/bind) workflow in QGIS. There
> are Python dependencies and build workflows that need to be
> discussed/resolved, but overall we believe it's a good time to start
> this discussion.
>
>
>
>
> Devs: as per https://github.com/geopython/MetaSearch/wiki/QGIS-Core-Integration,
> I'd like to discuss the possibility of integrating the MetaSearch
> Catalogue Client into QGIS as a core plugin.
>
> To quote Tim (Sutton):
>
> `tomkralidis: btw it would be great to see the CSW client made ready
> to go into QGIS core one of these days - its a missing piece from our
> 'out of the box OGC compliance'`
>
> Plugin: http://plugins.qgis.org/plugins/MetaSearch/
>
> Notes:
>
> - supports the badly-in-need publish/find/bind SDI workflow, allowing
> users to discover data/services and add them to their map
> - OGC services are seamlessly supported for dynamic add layer dialogues
> - over 1300 downloads in the last 6 weeks from plugins.qgis.org
> - interest across multiple organizations and countries (development,
> pull requests, documentation, feature requests/enhancements/bug
> reports, translation, etc.)
> - documentation: currently Sphinx, hosted on GitHub, translated on Transifex
> - extensible, future work will include additional APIs (OpenSearch, etc.)
> - initially forked from the excellent CSWClient work by NextGIS
>
> Dependencies:
> - user: https://github.com/geopython/MetaSearch/blob/master/requirements.txt
> - developer: https://github.com/geopython/MetaSearch/blob/master/requirements-dev.txt
> - managed in https://github.com/geopython/MetaSearch/blob/master/pavement.py#L60
> - OWSLib is a hard requirement
> - I'd be willing to move off Jinja2 (HTML templating) and pygments
> (Syntax highlighting) in favour of something already in QGIS; these
> are self contained in
> https://github.com/geopython/MetaSearch/blob/master/plugin/MetaSearch/util.py#L55
> and https://github.com/geopython/MetaSearch/blob/master/plugin/MetaSearch/util.py#L103,
> if there are easy alternatives already supported in the QGIS Python
> environment
> - I'm not familiar with QGIS development/build workflow/etc., so I'm
> not sure how the dependencies are/will be handled. Does/will QGIS have
> a Python package dependency strategy?
>
> Build/packaging:
> - uses Paver to build, package, bundle and upload to plugins.qgis.org
> - **dependencies are bundled with the plugin in isolation**
> - how does/would this look in a QGIS build?
>
> Issues:
>
> - UI: thanks to Anita, Tim and others on UI comments and development
> in Vienna last week.  We are working on these in master branch
> currently
> - default connections file: there is interest in organizations
> publishing their CSW to this list as a means to have it default in
> QGIS. Current process at
> https://github.com/geopython/MetaSearch/wiki/MetaSearch-Default-Connections-List.
>   We have Travis CI setup to always test the default connections so the
> list does not become stale over time (as well as pep8 checks, etc.)
>
> I hope this provides enough of an overview to move the discussion forward.
>
> Thanks for consideration.
>
> Tom Kralidis, Richard Duivenvoorde, Angelos Tzotsos,
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> Qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org
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-- 
Dr. Marco Hugentobler
Sourcepole -  Linux & Open Source Solutions
Weberstrasse 5, CH-8004 Zürich, Switzerland
marco.hugentobler at sourcepole.ch http://www.sourcepole.ch
Technical Advisor QGIS Project Steering Committee