fiona 0.6

Fiona is OGR's neater API

======
README
======

Fiona is OGR's neater API – sleek and elegant on the outside, indomitable power
on the inside.

Fiona provides a minimal, uncomplicated Python interface to the open source GIS
community's most trusted geodata access library and integrates readily with
other Python GIS packages such as pyproj_, Rtree_, and Shapely_.

How minimal? Fiona can read features as mappings from shapefiles or other GIS
vector formats and write mappings as features to files using the same formats.
That's all. There aren't any feature or geometry classes. Features and their
geometries are just data.

Dependencies
============

Fiona requires Python 2.6+ and libgdal 1.3.2+. To build from a source
distribution or repository clone you will need a C compiler and GDAL and Python
development headers and libraries. There are no binary distributions or Windows
support at this time.

Installation
============

Assuming you will install in a virtual environment and gdal-config_ is
properly installed::

$ virtualenv .
$ source bin/activate
(Fiona)$ pip install -d Fiona Fiona-0.5.tar.gz
(Fiona)$ cd Fiona
(Fiona)$ python setup.py build_ext $(gdal-config --cflags) $(gdal-config --libs) install

If gdal-config is not available or if GDAL/OGR headers and libs aren't
installed to a well known location, you must pass the build options
and locations in using setup arguments as shown above::

(Fiona)$ python setup.py build_ext -I/path/to/include -L/path/to/lib -lgdal install
Usage
=====

Collections are much like ``file`` objects. Features are mappings modeled on
the GeoJSON format and if you want to do anything fancy with them you will
probably need Shapely or something like it::

from fiona import collection
from shapely import asShape, mapping

# Open a source of features
with collection("docs/data/test_uk.shp", "r") as source:

# Define a schema for the feature sink
schema = input.schema.copy()
schema['geometry'] = 'Point'

# Open a new sink for features
with collection(
"test_write.shp", "w", driver="ESRI Shapefile",
schema=schema, crs=input.crs
) as sink:

# Process only the features intersecting a box
for f in source.filter(bbox=(-5.0, 55.0, 0.0, 60.0)):

# Get point on the boundary of the feature
f['geometry'] = f['geometry'] = {
'type': 'Point',
'coordinates': f['geometry']['coordinates'][0][0] }

# Stage feature for writing
sink.write(f)

# The sink shapefile is written to disk when its ``with`` block ends

Development and testing
=======================

Building from the source requires Cython. Tests require Nose. From the
distribution root::

$ virtualenv .
$ source bin/activate
(Fiona)$ ./cypsrc
(Fiona)$ python setup.py build_ext $(gdal-config --cflags) $(gdal-config --libs) develop
(Fiona)$ python setup.py $(gdal-config --cflags) $(gdal-config --libs) nosetests

Credits
=======

Fiona is written by:

* Sean Gillies

With contributions by:

* Frédéric Junod
* Michael Weisman

Fiona would not be possible without the great work of Frank Warmerdam and other
GDAL/OGR developers.

Some portions of this work were supported by a grant (for Pleiades_) from the
U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities (http://www.neh.gov).

.. _libgdal: http://www.gdal.org
.. _pyproj: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyproj/
.. _Rtree: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Rtree/
.. _Shapely: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Shapely/
.. _gdal-config: http://www.gdal.org/gdal-config.html
.. _Pleiades: http://pleiades.stoa.org