Adding a layer to geojson.io

Cloud services are becoming very common, and geospatial maps are no exception. This recipe demonstrates using a service named geojson.io, which serves vector layers online which you can upload from QGIS using Python.

Getting ready

For this recipe, you will need to install the qgisio plugin using the QGIS plugin manager. Note that this plugin is considered experimental, so ensure Show also experimental plugins is checked in you plugin manager settings.

You will also need an unprojected shapefile, such as the one from the following URL:

https://github.com/GeospatialPython/Learn/raw/master/union.zip

Decompress the zip file and place it in your qgis_data directory named shapes.

How to do it...

We will convert our shapefile to GeoJSON using a temporary file. We'll then use Python to call the qgisio plugin to upload the data for display online:

1. First, we need to import all of the relevant Python libraries:

           from PyQt4.QtCore import * 
           from PyQt4.QtGui...