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I have a polyline and I have two points on the polyline.
I would like to know if there is a tool or script that I could use to split my original polyline into 3 polylines? (Starting point to point A, Point A to B and B to ending point of the polyline)?
I am looking for an automatic process rather splitting the line manually.
QGIS won't do this natively to the best of my knowledge. However, you can use GRASS from within QGIS, and this thread looks like exactly what you want. I haven't tested this, but it all makes sense. Credit of course goes to the folks in that thread. First, you would import your data into GRASS then:
dump the coordinates to a text file (v.out.ascii) then loop thru that file, and feed the coords to v.edit, like so: v.out.ascii out=points.txt while read x y; do v.edit tool=break coord=$x,$y cat=0-99999 done < points.txt
Note the caveat that your points must be exactly on the line.
Or, even simpler in a bash environment:
v.out.ascii format=point in=pts --q | cut -d'|' -f1,2 | tr '|' ',' | while read COOR; do v.edit map=line tool=break coords=$COOR; done
If qgis cannot do that, shapely (a python module for manipulating shapefiles) seems able to do what you want.
Check http://sgillies.net/blog/1040/shapely-recipes/
To install the module, from you command terminal type: $ sudo pip install shapely
I just used GRASS module v.net.connect to carry out this task. Pay attention to distances points are away from lines (required input). Import lines and points to GRASS, find the v.net module, select the 'connect' option and set necessary parameters. I'm an amateur with GRASS and managed to get it done - getting GRASS and QGIS to work was the biggest hurdle!
