This usually turns up in the QGIS world every two years – So it’s my turn to talk about it. This month I did an emergency install of the TN 911 database. Basically client had a problem, we solved it in the most elegant way possible, and I’m still sorting out a few things. Generally it went smooth. We went from no database to being able to edit the existing data in half a day.
There were a few problems and I decided to sit down today and fix what I could. I think I’ve been actively using postgis for like 8 years now and there’s still things I learn. So after rewriting a couple of functions that recorded time stamps for metadata I started thinking about “multiuser”. When I did the first install we had about 4 people editing one fateful summer and I learned a lot on the human side of editing.
Today I added three more triggers to the setup which reference this post kartoza did a few years ago. I set up a signal/notification so that anytime an edit happens (be it insert, delete, or update) it fire’s off a signal to update qgis. Usually you have to manually refresh.
CREATE FUNCTION public.notify_qgis() RETURNS trigger
LANGUAGE plpgsql
AS $$
BEGIN NOTIFY qgis;
RETURN NULL;
END;
$$;
CREATE TRIGGER notify_qgis_address_edit
AFTER INSERT OR UPDATE OR DELETE ON tn911.address_points
FOR EACH STATEMENT EXECUTE PROCEDURE public.notify_qgis();
Once that is set up, updates are visible if you have two people editing. I pulled up two QGIS sessions to show you editing. All this happens on a Save:
So that’s this years look at notifications. Make an edit. Have postgresql fire off a notification. QGIS Updates.
