Calculating distance between consecutive points in same point layer in QGIS

Question

I have a point layer with close to 60.000 points that depict a river course (pixel extracts from satellite image). CRS of the layer is Geographic (Lat, Long).

The pixels are ordered ascendingly from source to outlet with an "ID" and each pixel has latitude and longitude. I want to know the distance in meter between two consecutive points (e.g. between point "ID"=35144 and "ID"=35145, between "ID"=35145 and "ID"=35146, etc.). This sounds very simple but I tried in numerous ways but failed.

I have tried:

• to transform the point layer to a line layer to measure the line segments. However, using the Vector Geometry (points to path) or diverse plugins such as NNJoin or MMQGIS I loose the vertexes (individual pixels) and therefore the point to point distance
• to create a distance matrix but this gets messy too, because it is the same layer. Also, other "nearest neighbour"-tools do not work since it is the same layer.
• to use the field calculator and loop through the rows of my dataset --> but how?

Answer 1

You can use the following script in QGIS Python Editor. It returns the distance in meter for geographic crs.

Note: ID field should be integer/numeric. If it is string, you get wrong order like: 1, 10, 11, ..., 2, 20, 21, ..., 3, 30, 31, ...

layer_name = 'POINT_LAYER_NAME'
id_field_name = 'ID'

# get layer by name
layer = QgsProject.instance().mapLayersByName(layer_name)[0]

# Add new field. DIST_TO_NXT: distance to the next feature
layer.dataProvider().addAttributes([QgsField("DIST_TO_NXT",  QVariant.Double, len=15, prec=3)])
layer.updateFields()

# get the sorted feature list
request = QgsFeatureRequest().addOrderBy(id_field_name)
feats = list(layer.getFeatures(request))

# find the field's index
field_index = layer.fields().indexFromName("DIST_TO_NXT")

da = QgsDistanceArea()
da.setEllipsoid(layer.crs().ellipsoidAcronym())
# or maybe 
# da.setEllipsoid(QgsProject.instance().ellipsoid())

# skipped the last point, not to get IndexError.
for i in range(len(feats[:-1])):
    p1 = feats[i].geometry().asPoint()
    p2 = feats[i+1].geometry().asPoint()
    
    distance = da.measureLine(p1, p2)
    
    layer.dataProvider().changeAttributeValues(
                            {feats[i].id(): {field_index: distance}})

PS: The last distance is always NULL.

Answer 2

I'm sure there's some less complicated way, but you can use pyqgis like this:

lyr = QgsProject.instance().mapLayersByName('Vertices')[0] #Change Vertices to the name of your layer

orderfield = 'vertex_index' #Change to the name of you order field
distancefield = 'distance' #Field to store the distances in. Add before executing script

features = [[f.id(), f[orderfield], f.geometry()] for f in lyr.getFeatures()] #List all points id, orderfield value and geometry
features.sort(key=lambda x: x[1]) #Sort the list by orderfield
distancefieldindex = lyr.fields().indexFromName(distancefield) #Find index of distancefield

attrmap = {} #A dictionary to store each points id, distance field index and distance in
for e, (f1, f2) in enumerate(zip(features[::1], features[1::1])): #For each point pair, for example point 1 and point2, then point2 and point3
    if e==0: #If first point set distance to 0
        attrmap[f1[0]]={distancefieldindex:0}
    else: #Else calculate the distance between the two points
        attrmap[f1[0]]={distancefieldindex:f1[-1].distance(f2[-1])}

lyr.dataProvider().changeAttributeValues(attrmap) #Update the values
print('Done')

Answer 3

I am not sure if this is the best / fastest way, but I think it should work for you:

length(
    make_line(
        $geometry,
        geometry(
            get_feature_by_id('*NAME/ID_of_your_layer*', "*ID_field*"+1)
            )
        )
    )

For "ID" 1 you will get the length from 1 to 2, for 2 you will get 2 to 3 ... for your last point you won't get a length.