Geoprocessing with Python

Chapter 3. Reading and writing vector data

This chapter covers

• Understanding vector data
• Introducing OGR
• Reading vector data
• Creating new vector datasets
• Updating existing datasets

They seem to be rare these days, but you’ve probably seen a paper roadmap designed to be folded up and kept in your car. Unlike the more recent web maps that we’re used to using, these maps don’t use aerial imagery. Instead, features on the maps are all drawn as geometric objects—namely, points, lines, and polygons. These types of data, where the geographic features are all distinct objects, are called vector datasets.

Unless you only plan to look at maps that someone else has made, you’ll need to know how to read and write these types of data. If you want ...