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I'm trying to make a filter inside an overlay_nearest function where I must relate an attribute from the current layer to the overlay layer.

I'm trying to use with_variable to store the outer layer attribute, but for a weird reason it's not working. Can someone shed some light on how to make it work?

This is the expression I'm using (where "ID" is an integer):

with_variable(
    'myId', 
    "ID", 
    overlay_nearest(
         'Lines', 
          $geometry, 
          filter:="ID"=@myId
    )
)

The expression above returns an array with 0 elements, but any of the expressions below work ok:

This shows that with_variable seems to be working correctly as it returns the expected ID -> 80000.

with_variable('myId', "ID", @myId)

This shows that using the filter with a correct ID also works, as it returns 1 element in the array

with_variable(
    'myId', 
    "ID", 
     overlay_nearest(
         'Lines', 
          $geometry, 
          filter:="ID"=80000
     )
)

So, if @myId has the correct value (80000), and filtering with "ID"=80000 works as expected, why does filtering with "ID"=@myId not work?

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2
  • @tom-brennan posted a link to your last Q in the comments you can find two links in which could explain it github.com/qgis/QGIS/pull/45744 github.com/qgis/QGIS/issues/43146 Commented Feb 28, 2024 at 16:12
  • I tried with_variable() yesterday on your other Q and it didn't work for me with_QGIS Version 3.34.3-Prizren Commented Feb 28, 2024 at 16:31

1 Answer 1

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5

See my answer at: https://gis.stackexchange.com/a/477802/129409

Basically, it's a limitation in QGIS. There is a feature request open (https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/issues/43146), so it may become available at some point in the future.

In the meantime, the workaround is to wrap the overlay_nearest function in an eval call.

So rewriting your expression, you get:

with_variable('myId',"ID",
    eval( 'overlay_nearest( \'Lines\', $geometry, filter:="ID"=' || @myId || ' )' )
)
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3
  • 2
    Your answer works, but I found out that in this case we can even avoid the usage of with_variable, replacing @myId with the actual "ID" field. The only purpose of the with_Variable was to try to achieve this in the first place. Commented Feb 28, 2024 at 23:04
  • 1
    That's interesting @DanielMöller - does raise questions of how with_variable() variables are handled by functions that access other layers. It's the same process, first resolve the value of "ID" then apply it to overlay_nearest(), but it seems like "ID" has to be evaluated as part of a larger expression inside out, rather than stored as a variable. Commented Feb 29, 2024 at 2:08
  • @she_weeds - it doesn't seem to matter whether it's a with_variable(), or just a sub-expression. If it involves other layers, overlay_* doesn't seem to handle it as expected. Pretty sure using a variable (or sub-expression) generally works ok with other semi-complex parent expressions like aggregate. Commented Mar 1, 2024 at 3:24

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