How to import multiple textfiles in one step

Question

Is ist possible to import multiple textfiles (csv, tsv etc.) as layers in one step or do i have to do it file by file?

Answer 1

You can use the tool ogr2ogr and a little one-liner script to import a bunch of csv files together. It will help if you are trying to automate the process or have large number of files.

If you have QGIS installed, you should already have ogr2ogr. (on windows, open the MSYS terminal ). Otherwise grab FWTools for your platform and try the following.

• Create a plain text file called .vrt file for each of csv files. See http://www.gdal.org/ogr/drv_csv.html for example syntax. This is a one-time thing. If your source files change after that, you don't need to change the vrt files as long as the path and structure remains the same

• Assuming you have a folder with your vrt files at /data/csv/ Run the following:

  for x in /data/csv/*.vrt; do ogr2ogr -f "ESRI Shapefile" /data/${x%.*}.shp $x;done

You'll get your shapefiles in /data/ folder.