option for selecting connected ways

[dieterdreist]

This is an idea to simplify selection of connected ways with the same properties. Unfortunately I am not able to code this myself, but maybe someone finds it interesting, I am sure it would be very useful for many tasks.

Reasoning

With the ongoing fragmentation of highways and ways/geometry in general, due to more details being recorded, it is sometimes cumbersome to select all parts of a road or other higher order abstraction. This is a description of a functionality to facilitate selection of several connected ways with few clicks.

Workflow

The workflow could be like this:

1. right click on a way

beside the mouse pointer a context menu opens, option: "select connected ways (by tags)". After selecting it, a list of all the tags of the object, each is an individual button, is shown (something has to be done in case there are too many tags, e.g. a selection of available preselected tags plus a freeform field, or pulling tags from the complete list into an active filters list)

2. activate one or more tags

these act as filters. All connected ways (endpoint = endpoint) are selected (also connections of connections), as long as they have all the selected tags in common (live update when tags get selected or deselected).

3. ok button or cancel to finish

Example usecases

Selecting all pieces of a "road" with the same name or ref, and maxspeed / maxheight, etc.
Selecting all segments of a river
Checking for attribute continuity on a series of ways (attributes missing on some potentially small segments)

[GerdP]

See also #20809. Seems to be an alternative solution for the same problem.

[simon04]

Already possible using an adequate filter (such as highway name=XXX or highway ref=YYY) together with "Non-branching way sequences".

[dieterdreist]

I tried to do it, but did not find the Non branching way sequences, in the last Column, "M" there is an "A", but I did not find out what it is meant to do, and it did not appear to be selectable.

Generally, I am aware this is possible with the search, it is a very powerful tool, much more than the suggested tool, but because of this, it is also complex in the handling, typing highway=* name=Via Cristoforo Colombo, I thought next time I'd rather click the parts ;-)

Seriously, the solution above is about achieving the same with 3 clicks, if you have to type a lot, it is not easier than clicking all of them, particularly because of the names, which tend to be long and there is no autocompletion in search/filters.

I agree, for complex cases (e.g. if you do not only want the exact tags but also different tags optionally, or you want negations, etc.) the search and filters are great.

[skyper]

Replying to dieterdreist:

I tried to do it, but did not find the Non branching way sequences, in the last Column, "M" there is an "A", but I did not find out what it is meant to do, and it did not appear to be selectable.

Non-branching way sequences (Shift+W) is an action, available in the "Selection menu" and has nothing to do with filters.