Importing a series of named lines into QGIS

Question

I have a CSV/Excel file which consists of many rows of the format

n x1 y1 x2 y2.

where n is the name of the line, and x1 y1 is the coordinates of the start of the line and x2 y2 the coordinates of the end of the line.

I'd like to import this into a QGIS project where each pair of points is connected and the line is associated with its name. If I edit the file in the form

n x1 y1 1 1
n x2 y2 2 1
n x1 y1 1 2
n x2 y2 2 2
etc...

I can import them as points then join them as lines, but I'm not sure the names would stick. I have used the QuickWKT importer to get the lines, but they don't have a name/label which is important. There are 139 lines so I'd rather not add labels manually.

Is there an easy way to do this?

I'm using QGIS 3.28 Firenze.

Answer 1

In QGIS you can make use of virtual layers. Remember that they are computed on the fly, so you may want to export the result.

Add your csv to QGIS (drag and drop), then go to Layer/ Add layer/ add-edit virtual layer and enter the following query with the proper layer name. You may also want to specify the coordinate system.

select *, make_line(make_point(x1,y1),make_point(x2,y2)) as geometry
from my_csv_file