PyQGIS: Load Layers without Adding to QGIS Interface

Objectives:

• Load raster and vector layers without adding them to the QGIS interface

Open the QGIS Python Console

From the menu, select Plugins -> Python Console, or Ctrl + Alt + P (Windows)

You can type directly into the console, or select the pad and paper icon to write code in the editor. I prefer to write code in the editor because it allows me to save my work and run a compilation of commands.

Load a raster layer

Define the path to a raster

In the code editor, or console, create a variable containing the path to your raster file.

fn = 'c:/path/to/raster/file.tif'

Load a raster layer

Now we can load the raster layer without adding it to the QGIS interface. This process is basically the same as the previous method we’ve used, but instead of calling iface.addRasterLayer() we will use QgsRasterLayer(). We just need to pass the file name and layer name (in this case the layer name is empty).

rlayer = QgsRasterLayer(fn, '')

Load a vector layer

Define the path to a vector

In the code editor, or console, create a variable containing the path to your vector file.

fn = 'c:/path/to/vector/file.tif'

Load a vector layer

We can load a vector layer by the same process, but using QgsVectorLayer() instead of QgsRasterLayer(), and specifying the data provider (‘ogr’ in this case) in addition to the file name and layer name (empty in this case). This is done as follows.

vlayer = QgsVectorLayer(fn, '', 'ogr')

Video tutorial

See this tutorial described in a video.