ShapefileException when reading shapefile using PyShp

Question

I'm trying to read in a shapefile and keep getting a File Not Found error and this exception:

ShapefileException: Unable to open /Users/name/Documents/shapefile.shp

Here's what I've got:

import shapefile
# read the shapefile
reader = shapefile.Reader('/Users/name/Documents/shapefile.shp')

I've tried several variations of that and still get the error. The shapefile exists and it works. It's also in the same folder as the .dbf and .shx files. Any ideas?

• Vince: Does "name" have a space in it?
• mike: Yes it does actually. Perhaps replace that with an underscore?
• mike: That didn't work either
• user2856: What OS are you using?
• Vince: There are enough wonky things with the path reference that you should test if os.path.exists() can find the file first.

Answer 1

I could also get the ShapefileException when:

• the path to a shapefile is wrong
• the shapefile's name was wrongly specified
• there is no permission to access the shapefile

First of all, I suggest to double check the path to your shapefile:

• correctness of slashes /, backslashes \, double backslashes // based on the OS

As was mentioned by @Vince test whether the shapefile exists using isfile and exists functions from the os.path module:

import shapefile
from os.path import isfile, exists
absolute_path_to_file = '/Users/name/Documents/shapefile.shp'
dbf = absolute_path_to_file.replace('.shp', '.dbf')
if isfile(absolute_path_to_file) and exists(dbf):
 shp = shapefile.Reader(absolute_path_to_file)
 print(shp)

Another suggestion is to test your shapefile with the pytest package using functions from the test_shapefile.py:

import pytest
import shapefile
absolute_path_to_file = '/Users/name/Documents/shapefile.shp'
with pytest.raises(shapefile.ShapefileException):
 with shapefile.Reader(absolute_path_to_file) as sf:
 pass

Answer 2

What about this solution? reader = shapefile.Reader(r'/Users/name/Documents/shapefile.shp'). Just add r before the string chain. otherwise try by using the \ instead of /.

• user2856: A raw string (r'some string') will have no effect on forward slashes and changing forward slashes to backwards will not work on a non-Windows OS.