geopandas/doc/source/docs/user_guide/io.rst

.. _io:

Reading and Writing Files
=========================

Reading Spatial Data
---------------------

*geopandas* can read almost any vector-based spatial data format including ESRI
shapefile, GeoJSON files and more using the command::

    geopandas.read_file()

which returns a GeoDataFrame object. This is possible because *geopandas* makes
use of the great `fiona <http://fiona.readthedocs.io/en/latest/manual.html>`_
library, which in turn makes use of a massive open-source program called
`GDAL/OGR <http://www.gdal.org/>`_ designed to facilitate spatial data
transformations.

Any arguments passed to :func:`geopandas.read_file` after the file name will be
passed directly to :func:`fiona.open`, which does the actual data importation. In
general, :func:`geopandas.read_file` is pretty smart and should do what you want
without extra arguments, but for more help, type::

    import fiona; help(fiona.open)

Among other things, one can explicitly set the driver (shapefile, GeoJSON) with
the ``driver`` keyword, or pick a single layer from a multi-layered file with
the ``layer`` keyword::

    countries_gdf = geopandas.read_file("package.gpkg", layer='countries')

Where supported in :mod:`fiona`, *geopandas* can also load resources directly from
a web URL, for example for GeoJSON files from `geojson.xyz <http://geojson.xyz/>`_::

    url = "http://d2ad6b4ur7yvpq.cloudfront.net/naturalearth-3.3.0/ne_110m_land.geojson"
    df = geopandas.read_file(url)

You can also load ZIP files that contain your data::

    zipfile = "zip:///Users/name/Downloads/cb_2017_us_state_500k.zip"
    states = geopandas.read_file(zipfile)

If the dataset is in a folder in the ZIP file, you have to append its name::

    zipfile = "zip:///Users/name/Downloads/gadm36_AFG_shp.zip!data"

If there are multiple datasets in a folder in the ZIP file, you also have to
specify the filename::

    zipfile = "zip:///Users/name/Downloads/gadm36_AFG_shp.zip!data/gadm36_AFG_1.shp"

It is also possible to read any file-like objects with a :func:`os.read` method, such
as a file handler (e.g. via built-in :func:`open` function) or :class:`~io.StringIO`::

    filename = "test.geojson"
    file = open(filename)
    df = geopandas.read_file(file)

File-like objects from `fsspec <https://filesystem-spec.readthedocs.io/en/latest>`_
can also be used to read data, allowing for any combination of storage backends and caching
supported by that project::

    path = "simplecache::http://download.geofabrik.de/antarctica-latest-free.shp.zip"
    with fsspec.open(path) as file:
        df = geopandas.read_file(file)

You can also read path objects::

    import pathlib
    path_object = pathlib.path(filename)
    df = geopandas.read_file(path_object)

Reading subsets of the data
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Since geopandas is powered by Fiona, which is powered by GDAL, you can take advantage of
pre-filtering when loading in larger datasets. This can be done geospatially with a geometry
or bounding box. You can also filter rows loaded with a slice. Read more at :func:`geopandas.read_file`.

Geometry Filter
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

.. versionadded:: 0.7.0

The geometry filter only loads data that intersects with the geometry.

.. code-block:: python

    gdf_mask = geopandas.read_file(
        geopandas.datasets.get_path("naturalearth_lowres")
    )
    gdf = geopandas.read_file(
        geopandas.datasets.get_path("naturalearth_cities"),
        mask=gdf_mask[gdf_mask.continent=="Africa"],
    )

Bounding Box Filter
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

.. versionadded:: 0.1.0

The bounding box filter only loads data that intersects with the bounding box.

.. code-block:: python

    bbox = (
        1031051.7879884212, 224272.49231459625, 1047224.3104931959, 244317.30894023244
    )
    gdf = geopandas.read_file(
        geopandas.datasets.get_path("nybb"),
        bbox=bbox,
    )

Row Filter
^^^^^^^^^^

.. versionadded:: 0.7.0

Filter the rows loaded in from the file using an integer (for the first n rows)
or a slice object.

.. code-block:: python

    gdf = geopandas.read_file(
        geopandas.datasets.get_path("naturalearth_lowres"),
        rows=10,
    )
    gdf = geopandas.read_file(
        geopandas.datasets.get_path("naturalearth_lowres"),
        rows=slice(10, 20),
    )

Field/Column Filters
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Load in a subset of fields from the file:

.. note:: Requires Fiona 1.8+

.. code-block:: python

    gdf = geopandas.read_file(
        geopandas.datasets.get_path("naturalearth_lowres"),
        ignore_fields=["iso_a3", "gdp_md_est"],
    )

Skip loading geometry from the file:

.. note:: Requires Fiona 1.8+
.. note:: Returns :obj:`pandas.DataFrame`

.. code-block:: python

    pdf = geopandas.read_file(
        geopandas.datasets.get_path("naturalearth_lowres"),
        ignore_geometry=True,
    )


Writing Spatial Data
---------------------

GeoDataFrames can be exported to many different standard formats using the
:meth:`geopandas.GeoDataFrame.to_file` method.
For a full list of supported formats, type ``import fiona; fiona.supported_drivers``.

In addition, GeoDataFrames can be uploaded to `PostGIS <https://postgis.net/>`__ database (starting with GeoPandas 0.8)
by using the :meth:`geopandas.GeoDataFrame.to_postgis` method.

.. note::

    GeoDataFrame can contain more field types than supported by most of the file formats. For example tuples or lists
    can be easily stored in the GeoDataFrame, but saving them to e.g. GeoPackage or Shapefile will raise a ValueError.
    Before saving to a file, they need to be converted to a format supported by a selected driver.

**Writing to Shapefile**::

    countries_gdf.to_file("countries.shp")

**Writing to GeoJSON**::

    countries_gdf.to_file("countries.geojson", driver='GeoJSON')

**Writing to GeoPackage**::

    countries_gdf.to_file("package.gpkg", layer='countries', driver="GPKG")
    cities_gdf.to_file("package.gpkg", layer='cities', driver="GPKG")


Spatial databases
-----------------

*geopandas* can also get data from a PostGIS database using the
:func:`geopandas.read_postgis` command.

Writing to PostGIS::

    from sqlalchemy import create_engine
    db_connection_url = "postgresql://myusername:mypassword@myhost:5432/mydatabase";
    engine = create_engine(db_connection_url)
    countries_gdf.to_postgis("countries_table", con=engine)


Apache Parquet and Feather file formats
---------------------------------------

.. versionadded:: 0.8.0

GeoPandas supports writing and reading the Apache Parquet and Feather file
formats.

`Apache Parquet <https://parquet.apache.org/>`__ is an efficient, columnar
storage format (originating from the Hadoop ecosystem). It is a widely used
binary file format for tabular data. The Feather file format is the on-disk
representation of the `Apache Arrow <https://arrow.apache.org/>`__ memory
format, an open standard for in-memory columnar data.

The :func:`geopandas.read_parquet`, :func:`geopandas.read_feather`,
:meth:`GeoDataFrame.to_parquet` and :meth:`GeoDataFrame.to_feather` methods
enable fast roundtrip from GeoPandas to those binary file formats, preserving
the spatial information.

.. warning::

    This is an initial implementation of Parquet file support and
    associated metadata. This is tracking version 0.1.0 of the metadata
    specification at:
    https://github.com/geopandas/geo-arrow-spec

    This metadata specification does not yet make stability promises. As such,
    we do not yet recommend using this in a production setting unless you are
    able to rewrite your Parquet or Feather files.