The QWC2 plugin allows to publish and update QGIS projects on the web from QGIS desktop.

The plugin has an associated server component that lives in the QWC2 microservices ecosystem.

Below is a blueprint of the architecture .

There are two prerequisite :

• To open the plugin window and add a new project in the application, it is necessary to have a QGIS project opened in QGIS Desktop. Once the window is opened the user can also configure projects that are already published. If the user only want to modify an existing project, he must open it in QGIS Desktop to open the QWC2 plugin configuration window.

• The user also needs to know the url of the server, his/her username and password.

Clone this repository in the QGIS plugin folder:

git clone <this repository> ~/.local/share/QGIS/QGIS3/profiles/default/python/plugins/qwc2_plugin

Run the server component locally:

cd  ~/.local/share/QGIS/QGIS3/profiles/default/python/plugins/qwc2_plugin
virtualenv -p python3 venv
. venv/bin/activate
pip install flask
python server.py

It is necessary to have a themesConfig.json in the path defined in server.py, by default tmp/themesConfig.json.

Open QGIS desktop, create a QGIS project, configure QGIS server services (WMS, WFS...), activate the plugin and click on the QWC2 icon in the plugin toolbar (the third one)

The configuration dialog opens:

It is divided in two part:

• in the authentication part, the user complete the required information to connect to the server. The user click on test connection to check url and credentials and get the current configuration.
• in the project part updated information from the themesconfig.json are presented. The default diplayed project is the one currently opened in QGIS. The user can display/configure all projects already on the server: scales, background, default background and searchproviders. When the user click on ok information sent to the server component that saves in themesConfig.json.

The server component will be running the server, it will provide the plugin as part of its service. The user will dowload the plugin on, say, https://<the_server_url>/plugin/qwc2_plugin.zip and install it on his computer and activate it with the QGIS Plugin Manager.

The user will click on the config dialog icon and configure the projects published on the server.

We are currently working on the authentication using existing QWC2 services, the generation of themes.json is also already available as a QWC2 service.

Some improvements that we can think of after that:

• control if the project has QGIS Server services activated,
• transfer layers symbols to the server (e.g. in case of custom svg symbols)
• transfer datasources (shapefiles, geopackages) to the server if the data used by the project are not already available "online" (note: the server typically hosts a PostGIS server)

We already talk about this plugin in the mailling list QWC2 and in an issue on github.

Feel free to add comments or/and suggest changes.