QGIS – Join Attributes by Nearest

By David Crowther

QGIS 3.8 Zanzibar was released in August 2019 and the full change log can be viewed here:

https://qgis.org/en/site/forusers/visualchangelog38/index.html

Here is a great new tool which allows you to Join the Attributes from a Nearest layer, so for example you could attach the name of the nearest school to all your address points.

Join Attributes from Nearest

In the video below we use the new Join Attributes by Nearest tool to join the School Name to the Address layer using the nearest school object.

In QGIS 3.8 the new Join by Attributes allows you to choose an input layer (e.g. Liverpool Addresses) and a second input layer (e.g. Liverpool Schools) to join attributes. The attributes being joined are taken from Input layer 2 and you can choose to append all fields or a selection e.g. just the School Name.

Once the tool runs a new layer is created with the Name of the nearest school now appended to each address record!