Shapefile.py

Introduction

Shapefile.py is an Open Source module for reading and writing Esri-format shapefiles. Shapefile.py is interesting both because it is very easy to use and an example of how to read and write binary files with Python.

Shapefile.py is much easier to use than the "cursors" provided by ArcGIS but Shapefile.py does not provide the ability to filter shapefiles by attributes. There is minimal documentation available for Shapefile.py but a good tutorial is available under "Additional Resources" below.

Below is an example of using shapefile.py to read the bounding boxes for the shapes in a shapefile and then read the attribute values.

# import Tkinter, Tkinter's FileDialog, the shapefile module, and os.path
import Tkinter
import tkFileDialog
import shapefile
import os.path

# initialize Tkinter
root = Tkinter.Tk()

# Get a full path to a shapefile from the user
FilePath = tkFileDialog.askopenfilename(filetypes=[("allfiles","*")])

# split the full path into a path without an extension and the extension
FileNameWithoutExtension,Extension=os.path.splitext(FilePath)

# splitext() returns a unicode string which is not supported by shapefile.py
# so we need to convert it to an ASCII string
FileNameWithoutExtension=str(FileNameWithoutExtension)

# open the shapefile 
TheShapefile=shapefile.Reader(FileNameWithoutExtension)

# get the list of shapes (points, polygons, or polines) in the file
TheShapes=TheShapefile.shapes()

# find the number of shapes from the length of the list
NumShapes=len(TheShapes)
print("Number of Shapes:"+format(NumShapes))

# iterate through each shape in the list and print out it's bounding box
for TheShape in TheShapes:
	print("Box: "+format(TheShape.bbox)) # bbox stands for bounding box

# get the list of fields (attribute column headings) from the file
TheFields=TheShapefile.fields

# print the field names
print(TheFields)

# get the records (attribute rows) from the shapefiles dbf file
TheRecords=TheShapefile.records()

# find the number of records
NumRecords=len(TheRecords)
print("Number of records: "+format(NumRecords))

# print each of the records (attribute rows) in the shapefile
Count=0
while (Count<NumRecords):
	print("Records: "+format(TheRecords[Count]))
	Count+=1

Additional Resources

shapefile.py