Add Geoprocessing Tools to the QGIS Toolbar

I am going to attempt a post a week on something and I’m already behind.

All of my work is falling into one of two categories at the moment: PostGIS and QGIS. At the moment I’m loading data into PostGIS using QGIS. So I’m:

• I’m looking at the data going “What the fork is this”
• When I figure it out it’s then “I’m going to push this in and toss some permissions on it”.

It’s not like pushing data into PostGIS is a complicated process these days: OGR2OGR, QGIS, and I’m pretty sure GRASS can import – so it’s whatever makes my life easier which is QGIS at the moment. So generally I like the “Export to PostgreSQL” tool in the Processing Toolbox. Once you use it it floats to the top under the Recently Used Geoprocessing tools.

At that point in my existence it’s literally two clicks away. One could really “Type it out” using the locate toolbar so no clicking is involved – BUT – what if I wanted that geoprocessing tool on my toolbar.

While updating one of the two QGIS Classes – I stumbled into this “one really cool trick”. It all is hidden under the options menu. Go to Settings -> Options and navigate to the processing tab.

Scary Right? It’s not that bad. Here is the hardest part of this whole thing – Click on Menus and you’ll see a host of options. Click on QGIS (native c++) and look for Buffer. Click on Buffer and click on the checkbox to “Add Button in Toolbar”. You may need to dig around to find other tools. QGIS keeps them divided into 3 categories.

Close QGIS

Re-Open It.

Hey you have a brand new toolbar called Processing Algorithms and you’ve got a brand new button with a pic on it that looks like an Boomerang (or upside down ‘L’). Press that and you have the buffer geoprocessing tool ready for use.

So – entirely necessary? In my case not really – it is nice to have access to it in one click. It is nice from the standpoint that I can take an inexperienced user and customize the interface to where they don’t need to know where this tool is or how to get to it – just push a button. You can keep adding tools that you want up there – in this case I really only wanted two. When I’m done I’ll “turn them off” but for now I like my extra toolbar.