Contributing to GeoNode: Managing Metadata with the QGIS Metatools Plugin
GeoSolutions is an active contributor of GeoNode and recently has done a good number of improvements for it; in this quick post we are going to talk about some work we are done for improving metadata management workflow.
One of the main difficulties GeoNode’s users usually report, is the editing of layer metadata which a tedious and time consuming task, which forces users to fill a lot of fields and information. If you have shared our pain for this you will be glad to know that we are working on improvements for GeoNode native metadata web editor, however in the meanwhile we have contributed a fix to make the Metatools plugin for QGIS work again, so that our users can easily use it to create and update metadata from templates and the upload to GeoNode.
The development of this plugin has stopped for a long time at the version 0.3.0, and recently it has become incompatible with the latest QGIS versions. In particular the editor and the viewer started to throw errors and exceptions at runtime making the plugin unusable.
We have recently fixed these issues and created a pull request that has been accepted and merged into the the 0.3.1 version of the Metatools plugin which is now available for download.
How the Metatools plugin works.
The plugin can be easily installed on QGIS through its plugin console, as shown below. You will need to enable QGIS to fetch also the experimental plugins.
MetTools Installation
Now you can import a dataset on QGIS. As an instance an ESRI Shapefile as shown below.
Uploading a shapefile
The plugin is accessible from the QGis toolbar as shown below.
MetaTools plugin available
In order to be compliant with GeoNode, you will need to import an OGC CSW metadata template XML. This can be easily generated by GeoNode itself. Use the “Import metadata” widget of Metatools plugin in order to import the template as shown below.
Importing an existing metadata file in GeoNode
Using the Metatools “Metadata editor” you can easily and quickly edit the field values, like the title or the Metadata author.
Editing title in metadata
Editing author in metadata
Preview the metadata using the Metatools “Metadata viewer” as shown below.
Previewing metadata files
And finally export it as an XML file for publishing in GeoNode. Uploading the ESRI Shapefile along with its brand new metadata XML file, will allow GeoNode to automatically recognize the fields and setup the metadata on the backend for you automatically as shown below.
Uploading shapefile and metadata
The newly added layer
It is worth to point out that this work has been performed under the umbrella of our GeoSolutions Enterprise Support Services offer.
If you want to know more about how we can help your organization, don’t hesitate and get in touch with us! Make sure to check our Enterprise Services Offer which has been used to complete the work described in this post.
The GeoSolutions Team,
