Export selected fields from attribute table in QGIS

Question

In my attribute table there is a large number of fields. I want to export the data with selected fields.

How to do this in QGIS?

Answer 1

Two ways:

1. The "Save Vector Layer" dialog lets me choose which fields to save.

2. Use either the "Drop Fields" or "Retain Fields" processing tools (in the "Vector Table" section of the processing toolbox) to create a new temporary scratch layer with a new set of fields. Then export that and delete it if you won't need it again.

You can probably set up a graphical model to do all this if you are going to be doing this a number of times.

Answer 2

I could suggest a PyQGIS way of implementing this task.

# referring to a needed layer
layer = iface.activeLayer()

# creating a temporal layer from selected features
temp_layer = layer.materialize(QgsFeatureRequest().setFilterFids(layer.selectedFeatureIds()))

# specifying important fields
needed_fields = ["id"]
all_fields = [field.name() for field in layer.fields()]
other_fields = list(set(all_fields) - set(needed_fields))

# getting indexes of other fields
idx = [temp_layer.fields().indexFromName(field) for field in other_fields]

# deleting other fields based on their indexes
temp_layer.dataProvider().deleteAttributes(idx)
temp_layer.updateFields()

# adding temporal output to the map canvas
QgsProject.instance().addMapLayer(temp_layer)

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References:

• Getting field names of a layer in PyQGIS
• How to delete column/field in PyQGIS?
• Adding multiple layer on Map Canvas using pyqgis
• Getting attributes of selected features using PyQGIS