[QGIS-Developer] QGIS project maintainability, forms and styles, xml verbosity

[John Stevenson - BGS]

We have a QGIS plugin that we use locally that stores layer styles as .qml files.  We also had the issues with the order of the fields and sections in the XML changing.  This meant that a diff between two files was useless.

The code below uses `canonicalize` to fix the ordering issue, and now we can see the actual changes between files in our GitLab repo.

```python
from pathlib import Path
from xml.etree.ElementTree import canonicalize

# Save the style of the current layer
layer_style_path = Path(‘my_layer_style.qml’)
layer = QgsProject.instance().mapLayersByName(table_name)[0]
layer.saveNamedStyle(
    str(layer_style_path),
    categories=QgsMapLayer.Symbology | QgsMapLayer.Labeling | QgsMapLayer.Fields | QgsMapLayer.Forms | QgsMapLayer.MapTips
    )

# Read the newly created XML file
raw_xml = layer_style_path.read_text()
# Canonicalize the XML data and save back to the same file
# Set the newline manually to force LF line endings
with open(layer_style_path, "w", newline="\n") as qml_file:
    canonicalize(xml_data=raw_xml, out=qml_file)

```

Cheers
John

From: QGIS-Developer <qgis-developer-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> On Behalf Of Emma Hain via QGIS-Developer
Sent: Tuesday, August 20, 2024 2:48 AM
To: Thomas Larsen Wessel <mrvelle at gmail.com>
Cc: qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [QGIS-Developer] QGIS project maintainability, forms and styles, xml verbosity

Thanks Thomas
I have put that into the notes for us to prepare if it is submitted into a grant.

Let us know if there are any more aspects to add,

Cheers
Em

On Tue, 20 Aug 2024 at 08:35, Thomas Larsen Wessel via QGIS-Developer <qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org<mailto:qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org>> wrote:
I forgot an important detail, that explains why it gets intolerable for me. The qgis project I maintain has several layers that are close to identical, but covering different municipalities. So when I change a form, I need to make that change to several layers (each having several styles).
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