I am experiencing an issue with a shared GeoPackage workflow and hope to get some guidance.
I created a GeoPackage with the intention of sharing it with other ecologists so they can load it into their own QGIS/QField projects and contribute data. The GeoPackage works well: it contains layers with multiple fields, including some fields with widgets and formulas.
The issue arises with the photo field:
On my computer, the photo field works perfectly.
When another person opens the same GeoPackage on a different computer, the original photo field no longer works.
If that person then creates a new photo field, sets up the widget correctly, and uploads the GeoPackage to the cloud, the photo field is removed.
All other fields and data remain intact, but the photo field either stops working or disappears after sharing and cloud uploading.
My goal is to have a GeoPackage that:
Works for multiple users on different computers.
Preserves the original photo field for everyone.
Allows users to upload edits to the cloud without losing fields.
Has anyone encountered this issue before? Is there a recommended workflow to ensure that photo fields in a shared GeoPackage work across different devices and are not removed after cloud synchronization?
Hello! Some questions to further understand your problem:
When you say “on a different computer” that means when both of you work with QGIS? Or are you both working with QField on the desktop? Or any mix of the both?
Can you share how is the photo path field configured? If you can share an empty/example project, even better.
I’m not sure I understand this. Does the other person delete your original photo path field on the layer table inside the Geopackage and then creates and configures a new one? If that’s the case, I think that’s the normal behaviour (you cannot edit a “column” or field in a table, as far as I know you have to delete it and create a new one). But then I’m not sure why would they be deleting a field (or “column”) on a layer.
If you just meant that the other person just adds a new feature to a layer inside a Geopackage without modifying any configuration, then indeed it’s weird. Is the field empty on the cloud save, or is there a path on the field but is the image file that’s missing?
What are the intended platforms you expect them to use? By what I see on this forum, there seems to be a lot more quirks on iOS, so I would recommend to just avoid it if possible. But at least on linux/android/windows I had no problems achieving the goals you lay out, at least with very simple projects and both with wire transfers and QFieldCloud.