Django-shapefileimport

GeoDjango includes a helper function to import ESRI shapefiles to PostGIS enabled DB: LayerMapping It works as intended but it's still a boring process. Moreover, the usual importing procedure means creating new migrations for each imported shapefile. This is problably OK for sparse importings of a couple of shapefiles. But as I needed to manage many shapefiles and/or keep adding/deleting them it doesn't sounded to me very sane to keep afecting migration files (and migration history). This APP proposes an alternative to manage such shapefiles:

• Adds shapefile ZIP import option in admin page. Imports will include feature fields.
• Loads shapefiles by name on demand without touching migrations (so you can use all nice GeoDjango API features)
• Delete shapefiles from admin panel
• Option to keep or discard uploaded ZIP files while importing to DB

Installation

Clone this repo:

git clone https://github.com/Rodrigo-NH/django-shapefileimport

Enter the 'django-shapefileimport' directory, install de dependencies, enter shell and start a new project (For simplicity I reccomend keeping the ending dot at the django-admin startproject command, it makes project folder to be created at same level as the APP [not nested])

pipenv install
pipenv shell
django-admin startproject mysite .

edit './mysite/settings.py' and add to INSTALLED_APPS:

'django.contrib.gis',
'shapefileimport'

Still at './mysite/settings.py', configure the database connection:

DATABASES = {
'default': {
'ENGINE': 'django.contrib.gis.db.backends.postgis',
'NAME': 'shapeimportsDB',
'USER': 'geo',
'HOST': '192.168.0.40',
'PORT': '5432',
'PASSWORD': 'dbpassword',
#'CONN_MAX_AGE': 0,
},
}

Run migrations, create superuser and start the APP:

python manage.py makemigrations
python manage.py migrate
python manage.py createsuperuser
python manage.py runserver

It must be done at this point. Enter admin panel and start importing your shapefiles. After importing, use 'loadShape()' function to load the shapefile and use. Example:

from shapefileimport.shapetasks import loadShape
from django.core.serializers import serialize
ds = loadShape('MyShapeName')
ff = serialize('geojson', ds.objects.all(), geometry_field='geom',)

Notes

• You must have a propper GeoDjango setup environment, refer to https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.2/ref/contrib/gis/
• You must have PostGIS enabled, refer to https://postgis.net/install/
• This APP uses GeoDjango's LayerMapping helper to extract fields among other operations
• Only tested against PostreSQL