This plugin is no longer under any active development and is no longer maintained. It will hopefully continue working for some time as of 2019-12-19.
Welcome to this open source QGIS plugin. The purpose of the plugin is to enable users to browse and manipulate raster images, in particular satellite images. It does this through connecting QGIS to ArcGIS Image Servers. However, the way the hosts, the Image Services, use the ArcGis REST API d/oes not follow a universal standard. Therefore, the plugin suffers from compability issues toward some image servers. It is, however, compatible with most image servers that index their data with dates, and names. That being said, the plugin is currently in an alpha release state and we hope that the community will find it useful enough to continue its development.
The secondary purpose of the plugin is to stray away from the convoluted interaction design that is common in G. Its core functionality puts emphasis on four values; being visual, interactive, simple, and the interactions leading to predictable results. For the future of the plugin, we hope that those who take up the banner choose to hold on to these values. The current alpha release is on the right path, yet there are several issues we propose be resolved for future releases.
The project was set in motion by the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management to enable other agencies, and the public, ease of access to raster data in QGIS for environmental analyses. The project is a fork of ArcGIS_REST_API_Connector_Plugin by Geometa Lab.
- The plugin currently only supports logging in to image servers directly, meaning any image service url that ends with '/ImageServer'.
- There is currently no support for saving and loading a project with raster layers.
In your QGIS instance, you can download the latest version of the ArcGIS Image Server Connector plugin under 'Plugins --> Manage and Install Plugins' tab. Currently, you have to open the 'Settings' tab and enable the 'Show also experimental plugins' to see the plugin. Once installed, the plugin will appear as an icon on the 'Manage Layers Toolbar'.
The Swedish Forest Agency (Image Service)
The Swedish County Administrative Board (Image Service)
London Aerial 2017 (Image Server)
It uses a version of the model-view-controller design pattern. The model aims to only contain data to be manipulated by the controller and not use any third party modules. Currently, we use a service module to tie the functionality together between view controllers and the model. The controllers handle the interaction between the model and the user interface, each controller handling a single such interface. The current architecture leaves a lot of space for improvement, and is, just as the plugin, in an alpha state.
For the future of this project we have composed a backlog for issues we recommend looking into.
- Implement a test Suite for stability
- Save and load project feature
- Add support for more server configurations. Currently quite experimental with the type of servers it supports.
- Optimize how the image is updated in the main view, to avoid making new calls to the server anytime the image extent is changed (eg. moving in any cardinal direciton).
- Optimize the pixel density of the layer image in QGIS main view to be crisp and clear at all times. Perhaps use filtering or some algorithm to calculate the resolution of the main grid to use as a guideline.
- Bugfix: When the image is loaded at first it loaded twice and downscaled the second time. Make it load just the one time.
- Update the settings view to be in the same style as the other views. There are resources for stylesheets in the gui folder.
- In the settings view, show raster function options as a grid of thumbnails showing previews of each raster function, instead of a drop down list with no preview.
- Reload the extent when clicking ok/apply such that the mosaic rule is applied immediately.
- Suggest more (auto complete?) in each field, to alleviate the process for the user. (eg based on earlier usages, or some smart stuff you can come up with.)
- In the custom raster function field, allow the user to write stuff without having to add the syntactic stuff like '{}' brackets.
- Priority: Functionality for the search field to filter items that are on the server. It is almost already done, and the finishing step is to intergrate it in 'layer_dialog_controller.py'. There is a TODO in the file and some code that has been commented out, have a look there to find where to start. Currently it 'can' filter server items but it crashes because there are usually too many (Only 'works' for image servers with dates on their server items). Also, there is no regulation of how to handle filtered images and then going back to showing all images.
- Bugfix: The grid already removes 'empty' or malformed images. However, it creates white space where these widgets were supposed to be. Please make it go away, such that the grid is compact.
- Bugfix: When filtering stuff in the search field one image just sticks to the top left corner of the grid. Please remove this unholy beast.
- Bugfix the crashing when you close the application with the 'create layer' view open.
- Load new items even when scrolling with the scroll slider. Currently it only loads new items when scrolling with the mouse wheel.
- Generalize UI in the create layer view for when there are more than one image per day (date items). Currently only shows the image date.
- Unclear whether servers with named server items have more than one image. If they do, and it's possible to somehow get them using some of the server functions like 'ExportImage', show them in the create layer view too. So far, we have not found a way to browse named images on the server as the API for 'ExportImage' doesn't seem to contain a suitable field for that.
- Make the connect button go back to its initial color when clicked, instead of awkwardly staying in the 'clicked' state.
- Add a dialog with help text when clicking the '?' button on the top right, or remove it completely. For example, it could show a dialog with some basic information about how to login, and some example servers. Maybe some visual aid showing how to navigate the plugin.
- Add autofill suggestions based on earlier successful logins.
We are not affiliated, associated, authorized, endorsed by, or in any way officially connected with Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. (Esri), or any of its subsidiaries or its affiliates. The official Esri website can be found at https://www.esri.com. The name ArcGIS as well as related names, marks, emblems and images are registered trademarks of Esri.
The use in this plugin and/or in related promotional material of trademarked names and images is strictly for editorial and descriptive purposes, and no commercial claim to their use, or suggestion of sponsorship or endorsement, is made by this plugin. Those words or terms that the authors and publisher have reason to believe are trademarks are designated as such by the use of initial capitalization, where appropriate. However no attempt has been made to identify or designate all words or terms to which trademark or other proprietary rights may exist. Nothing contained herein is intended to express a judgment on, or affect the validity of legal status of, any word or term as a trademark, service mark, or other proprietary mark.
This project is licensed under GPL v2.