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I have features and each of them has an attribute about what it is. In my case, I have points representing trees and each tree has its species name as an attribute.

enter image description here

I would like to group them by species name and using numbers from 1 to n as seen on picture and if possible, not by hand because sometimes I have hundreds of species. I was thinking of some kind of expression which includes $rownum and tried a few things but no results. SQL queries also came to mind, but I have limited experience with them and I've never given them a try in QGIS.

I really don't want to export data to a spreadsheet, I would like to solve this in QGIS if possible.

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  • Does the number of the group matter? Or is it just the case that each uniqe tree name should get a uniqe number? – Matte Apr 16 '16 at 10:33
  • It doesn't matter, each unique species should be given a unique number. – Skye Apr 16 '16 at 12:35
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There is an easy way that needs two steps from the db-manager and two tables that can be deleted in the end(there is a way with virtual tables, but i don´t get them to work properly from the db-manager).

  • go to db-manager and then to virtual layers and select your table with the trees; then start the sql-window

  • Enter into the query field: SELECT distinct(species) FROM "your table name"

run it, and save it as a new table (for example temp1) with the button down below

  • now open the same way the query again for your temp1-table and enter:

SELECT species,

rowid AS number from temp1

run it and save it as temp2

  • now you can join your table temp2 to your species-table by using the column species (via the joins function from your layer-preferences); Qgis does create a 1:n join and therefore the numbers are copied for each species

  • use the field calculator to add the numbers to your species table, then you can delete the temp1 and temp2

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  • 1
    Unfortunately, an error message popped up just after I pasted the first operation: *** Query execution error on DROP TABLE IF EXISTS "groupby"; CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE "groupby" USING QgsVLayer(groupby20160416154358801);: 1 - near "group": syntax errorLÄLD?a0 *** I don't know what happened, should I set Virtual Layers to be usable somewhere? – Skye Apr 16 '16 at 14:56
  • What Qgis version you use? I did use 2.14. Otherwise iḿ not sure what could have lead to it. – Matte Apr 16 '16 at 15:23
  • My bad, first, I had to create a Spatialite database, and now it works perfectly, amazing! Huge thanks! – Skye Apr 16 '16 at 17:02
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You could to use the "Field Calculator".

Try this expression for update your field "group":

CASE WHEN "species"='Ash' THEN 1 WHEN "species"='Beech' THEN 2 ...... ...... END

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