Time Manager — Animation of temporal vector layers

Principle

You can create animations of your vectors, provided you have at least a layer with a column with a valid date/time.

Example

  • On the demo website, look at the Earthquake in Indonesia. You can download the QGIS project to see how it’s done.

  • A video tutorial is available. It shows all the steps to use the functionality.

Prerequisites

The layer must be published as WFS (see WFS/OAPI) and the primary key must be published as well in the Layer properties.

Configuring the tool

After the configuration, your web application will display the symbol of a watch; clicking on it will open a small panel that will allow you to move between steps, or play the entire animation. At startup, the application will load the entire table, so if you have thousands of objects you may need to wait for several seconds before the application is available.

Note

Several different formats for date/time are acceptable (those supported by the JavaScript library DateJS). You can check whether your format is supported by entering it on `DateJS<https://github.com/datejs/Datejs>`_.

At the layer level

../../_images/publish-time-manager.jpg

  • For setting the time manager with one layer:

    1. Click the add_layer_svg button.

    2. One layer with date/time capabilities.

    3. The start column with date/time. It can any kind of fields.

    4. The end column with date/time. This is optional.

    5. Date/time resolution of the chosen attribute(s).

    6. For not database based layer, you must compute the minimum and maximum values.

Warning

Date/time resolution can have a different value than Frame type. You might select years for Frame type but your date field could have a Days resolution.

  • To edit a layer in the table, select it and click the edit_layer_svg button or double click on the row.

  • To remove a layer from the table, select it and click the remove_layer_svg button.

  • To move a layer up or down, select it and click down_layer_svg or up_layer_svg buttons. The order will change in Lizmap too.

At the project level

../../_images/interface-time-manager.jpg

Options:

  • Time frame size

  • Frame type

  • Animation frame length