[SoC] Web API plugin for QGIS

[Kevin Stadler]

Hello everyone,

my GSoC 2017 project is about developing a slim plugin for QGIS
Desktop which exposes the visualisation and processing functions of a
running QGIS instance via a simple programming language-independent
web service interface which can be used as a sort of programmatic
'remote
control'. One motivation behind the idea was to give direct access to
QGIS' map styling tools to GIS-savvy but otherwise 'mapping-deficient'
(and generally interaction-poor) programming languages, in particular
R (see also https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-sig-geo/2016-August/024817.html)

The project also covers fleshing out some specific use cases that show
how the plugin can be used to integrate QGIS into an automatic report
generation workflow. The approach of having data processing+analysis
code+documentation all in one file has been made popular by
technologies such as Jupyter notebooks and Rmarkdown, and I'm hoping
to demonstrate how this approach can be extended to GIS analyses which
combine QGIS functionality with that of other geoprocessing libraries
and data sources in a fully automated workflow.

About myself: while I have a background in software engineering, my
interaction with GIS software has so far been limited to casual/hobby
projects. I've been toying with map creation based on
mapnik/OSM/PostGIS, so far using QGIS for visualisation/data
exploration rather than processing. I therefore also expect to learn a
lot of new things through the project, in particular getting a better
insight into the breadth of use cases that are of interest to GIS
professionals!

(I have yet to update the OSGeo wiki with my project details but the
'Request account' page has been throwing a 500 status back at me for
the last couple days, let's hope it works again soon!)

Best,
Kevin