Saving a map to a project

Saving a project automatically can be useful for autosave features or as part of a process to autogenerate projects from dynamically updated data. In this recipe, we'll save a QGIS project to a .qgs project file.

Getting ready

You will need to download the following zipped shapefile and extract it to your qgis_data directory, to a subdirectory named ms:

https://geospatialpython.googlecode.com/svn/Mississippi.zip

How to do it...

We will create a simple QGIS project by loading a shapefile layer, then we'll access the project object, and save the map project to a file, as follows:

1. First, we need the Qt core library in the QGIS Python console:

   from PyQt4.QtCore import *
   

2. Next, we load the shapefile and add it to the map:

   lyr = QgsVectorLayer("/Users/joellawhead/qgis_data/ms/mississippi.shp", "Mississippi", "ogr")
   reg = QgsMapLayerRegistry.instance()
   reg.addMapLayer(lyr)
   

3. Then, we create a file object to save our project:

   f = QFileInfo...