Using ogr2ogr in Python scripts

Question

I have been trying to figure out how to execute ogr2ogr to convert files in Python script. I got it to work in Jupyter notebook within ArcGIS Pro and in the terminal but not in Python scripts. Here's the code I used in the notebook.

import os,arcpy,shutil
from osgeo import ogr
abspath=os.path.abspath
abspath = os.path.abspath("__file__")
dname = os.path.dirname(abspath)
os.chdir(dname)
ProjectFolder=dname
arcpy.env.workspace=ProjectFolder
arcpy.env.overwriteOutput = True
! ogr2ogr siteboundary.shp Boundary.TAB
print("Conversion done,your file is located in "+ProjectFolder)

I searched a lot on how to use ogr commands in python script but had no luck. So I exported the notebook to a python script which was this.

import os,arcpy,shutil
from osgeo import ogr
from IPython import get_ipython
abspath=os.path.abspath
abspath = os.path.abspath(__file__)
dname = os.path.dirname(abspath)
os.chdir(dname)
ProjectFolder=dname
arcpy.env.workspace=ProjectFolder
arcpy.env.overwriteOutput = True
get_ipython().System("! ogr2ogr siteboundary.shp boundary.geojson")
print("Conversion done, your file is located in "+ProjectFolder)

But this script is giving me a 'NoneType' error

"Traceback (most recent call last): File "S:\TOOLS\Scripts.test\CT429_ContamCertificates_GIS\Untitled1.py", line 24, in get_ipython().System("! ogr2ogr siteboundary.shp boundary.geojson") AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'System'"

So, I looked up nonetype error for system, found a really good resource "Any idea why IPython.get_ipython() is returning None?" but it's not working for me.

How can I do this?

I need this so that my team can run the Python scripts from the folder itself as that's more convenient.

Answer 1

I usually use subprocess to execute ogr2ogr.exe in windows cmd/terminal.

From geojson to shape:

import subprocess
command = [r"C:\OSGeo4W\bin\ogr2ogr.exe", r"C:\GIS\data\lan.shp", r"C:\GIS\data\lan.geojson"]
output, error = subprocess.Popen(
 command, universal_newlines=True,
 stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE).communicate()

• Muppidi Sahaja Reddy: Thank you so much, this works. I changed the command to this 'command= [r"S:\TOOLS\Scripts\.test\ogr2ogr.exe", "siteboundary.shp", "geojson.json"]' It works! Yes, I even changed the location of ogr2ogr.exe file to a relative location that is accessible by my team as well, and it works :)
• Theo F: I still find it strange how the ogr2ogr functionality isn't available via the python library. We must be missing something?

Answer 2

This is how I did it (for fgb):

from osgeo import gdal
shpin = 'shpin.shp'
gdal.UseExceptions()
src_shp = gdal.OpenEx(shpin)
ds=gdal.VectorTranslate(
'abc.fgb',
src_shp,
options='-f "FlatGeobuf"'
)
del ds

All credit goes to these two threads:

Using ogr2ogr to convert GML to shapefile in Python?

gdal.VectorTranslate returns empty object