QGIS – Quickly Add Multiple Layers from Folders to Project

Question

I have downloaded several imagery Zip files (content of each is jp2, jpg, jpw, xml, htm, and .dbf, .prj, .sbn, .sbx, .shp, .shx) and would like to quickly add this imagery to my working project in QGIS 2.6.1. I am trying to avoid having to navigate to and add each file separately. Because each file is in a different folder, I have not been able to find a way to add multiple files at once.

Answer 1

What you need is the QGIS plugin Load Them All. Apart from loading files from several directories at once, you can:

• Reflect the directory structure in the QGIS Layer Tree / Table of Contents (by means of nested layer groups).
• Apply alphanumeric filters so that you just load layers that match your filter (think of regular expressions).
• Load only certain geometry or raster type (e.g., only polygon vectors or Multiband rasters).
• Load only certain file extensions (e.g., only .shp files).
• Load only layers that lie inside or that intersect a given bounding box.

and more. Have a look at https://github.com/gacarrillor/loadthemall for more details.

Note the plugin can search for / filter sublayers (e.g., inside a GeoPackage file).