Importing shapefiles

The process of importing a shapefile involves the following steps:

1. Display a form prompting the user to upload the shapefile's ZIP archive.
2. Decompress the ZIP file to extract the uploaded shapefile.
3. Open the shapefile and read its data into the database.
4. Delete the temporary files we have created.

Let's work through each of these steps in turn.

The Import Shapefile form

Let's start by creating a placeholder for the "Import Shapefile" view. Edit the urls.py module and add a new entry to the urlpatterns list:

url(r'^import$', shapeEditor.shapefiles.views.import_shapefile),

Then, edit the shapeEditor/shapefiles/views.py module and add a dummy import_shapefile() view function to respond to this URL:

def import_shapefile(request):
    return HttpResponse("More to come")

You can test this if you want: run the Django server, go to the main page, and click on the Import New Shapefile button. You should see the More to come message.

To let the...