[QGIS-Developer] Question on FGDB support for "Save As" / "Export"

[Matthias Kuhn]

Hi,

Just a quick question about the file vs. directory problem. Do we need
to be able to select an existing directory or a new one?
If it's the latter (new .gdb-folder), we can just use the existing file
dialog, which will return a path to a file name (but not yet create a
new file) and we can then have the fgdb driver create a new folder
instead of a file at this position.
I might be missing something though.

Matthias

On 07/31/2018 12:05 PM, Andreas Neumann wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> A Swiss QGIS user asked me if/how FGDB for export/Save as can be
> supported in QGIS - question specifically about the Windows distribution
> of QGIS 3.x. Sometimes, QGIS users have to deliver results in fgdb
> format, because their clients require it.
> 
> A quick e-mail exchange with Even Roualt revealed the following:
> 
> 1. it is already supported if the proper "gdal-filegdb" packages are
> installed.
> 
> 2. Currently, it can only be enabled in the OSGeo4W version by selecting
> the "gdal-filegdb" package. The standalone installer does not include
> this package.
> 
> 3. There are issues when wanting to "Save As" an additional layer into
> an already existing FGDB. The problem is that fgdb files are actually
> directories. And the current "Save As" dialog does not support selecting
> "directories" to save into, only files. As a workaround, it works if one
> copy/pastes the full path from the Windows file explorer into the "Save
> As" dialog, but not when selecting a directory interactively.
> 
> Here is some info on the third issue from Even:
> 
> "I don't have the solution on top of my mind. According to
> http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qfiledialog.html#FileMode-enum it seems that you can
> setup the selector to select file or directories, but not both.
> We actually use the QFileDialog::getSaveFileName() API that probably
> internally resolves to QFileDialog::AnyFile
> Perhaps a more experience QT dev than me would have an idea.
> Or an hack (but not sure we can really do better) would be to allow the user
> to select any file in the .gdb directory, and then automatically strips out
> the filename to just keep the directory name when we see this a file in in a
> .gdb directory"
> 
> ---------------
> 
> So here are my two questions:
> 
> About issue 2:
> 
> @Jürgen: can you include the necessary gdal-filegdb package also in the
> standalone installer - or are there license problems?
> 
> About issue 3:
> 
> Does some dev have an idea or solution on how to more easily select a
> folder instead of a file, for the case of writing an additional layer
> into an already existing .fgdb folder?
> 
> Thank you all for your ideas and the discussion,
> 
> Andreas
> 
> 
> 
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