During my internship, I worked on a connection via the API between Tygron and QGIS. The tool serves as both an illustration and inspiration for the possibilities of the Tygron API.
Digital Ecosystem
By: Faris Bontje, Software Engineering student, The Hague University of Applied Sciences
The Tygron Platform offers a lot of functionality that is accessible via the Tygron Client. This client is driven by an API, which is also directly accessible to every user. This offers many capabilities to connect different programs with each other or to develop specialized workflows. During my internship, I worked on a tool that establishes a connection between Tygron and QGIS via the API. This tool serves as an illustration and inspiration for the possibilities of the Tygron API.
As a Software Engineering student at The Hague University of Applied Sciences, I started developing a plugin for QGIS. QGIS is a widely used open-source program that specialists use to analyze, visualize, and process geodata. My assignment was to make functionality of the Tygron Platform available within QGIS via the API, enabling users to easily adjust data from a Tygron project. Thanks to the plugin, actions that normally take a lot of time can be significantly accelerated.
Three releases of the plugin
At the beginning of my internship, I focused on exploring both the Tygron Platform and QGIS. Both were completely new to me, so I spent about two weeks experimenting with the Tygron Client and the API. Subsequently, I conducted interviews with four Tygron users to map out their wishes for a QGIS plugin and their experiences with the Tygron Platform. Based on this, I drafted use cases, made a schedule, and started the development of the plugin.
During the internship, I worked towards various milestones, step-by-step adding new functionality based on priority and the development of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). In addition, I gave an internal demo to gather feedback and share progress with the Tygron team. Meanwhile, three releases of the plugin have been published via Tygron's official GitHub account, which include bug fixes and new functionality.
Really valuable
To complete my internship successfully, I paid a lot of attention to the transfer of my work. I documented the code and wrote an extensive user manual, sharing it on GitHub. This allows the Tygron team and/or other Tygron users to easily develop the plugin further. Both the software architecture and the workflow for adding new functionality are clearly documented.
Looking back, this internship was a very valuable experience for me. It was the first time I could apply the software knowledge from my study program in a professional environment where my work is actually used. This requested a more structured way of working and better coordination with colleagues regarding my progress. It was also great to see that a lot of Tygron functionality can already be brought to QGIS, but that there are still plenty of opportunities to further improve usability within QGIS. As a result, I feel that I have worked on a product that truly adds value.
Structured planning
The most important lesson I learned during my internship is how important structured planning with achievable deadlines is. Since I worked on this assignment independently, it was tempting to decide day by day what I would work on. As a result, I sometimes lost the overall picture. By planning ahead, stakeholders were better informed about the project's progress, and I could better focus on concrete results instead of loose daily plans.
Contact with experienced users was also very valuable. Since I had no prior experience with the Tygron Platform or QGIS, I needed their insights along with my own exploration to get a good idea of what a valuable plugin should offer. Without these conversations, I could have easily made choices that did not align well with the users' needs.
How the Tygron QGIS Plugin works
The plugin was created to transfer data from the Tygron Platform to QGIS as easily as possible. After entering the API key in a session, the layers from the Tygron project are automatically imported into QGIS. In addition, the plugin offer extra functionality, such as drawing features and more comprehensive menus for filling in attributes than are standardly available in QGIS. Overlays are also easy to import, and even animations, such as rain and heat stress simulations, can be played directly within QGIS. This saves the user a lot of time compared to manually importing data and makes attribute editing clearer.
Get started yourself
Curious about the plugin I developed? The code is available on the Tygron GitHub:
