Book Image

Mastering Geospatial Analysis with Python

By : Silas Toms, Paul Crickard, Eric van Rees
Book Image

Mastering Geospatial Analysis with Python

By: Silas Toms, Paul Crickard, Eric van Rees

Overview of this book

Python comes with a host of open source libraries and tools that help you work on professional geoprocessing tasks without investing in expensive tools. This book will introduce Python developers, both new and experienced, to a variety of new code libraries that have been developed to perform geospatial analysis, statistical analysis, and data management. This book will use examples and code snippets that will help explain how Python 3 differs from Python 2, and how these new code libraries can be used to solve age-old problems in geospatial analysis. You will begin by understanding what geoprocessing is and explore the tools and libraries that Python 3 offers. You will then learn to use Python code libraries to read and write geospatial data. You will then learn to perform geospatial queries within databases and learn PyQGIS to automate analysis within the QGIS mapping suite. Moving forward, you will explore the newly released ArcGIS API for Python and ArcGIS Online to perform geospatial analysis and create ArcGIS Online web maps. Further, you will deep dive into Python Geospatial web frameworks and learn to create a geospatial REST API.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
7
Geoprocessing with Geodatabases
Index

Chapter 11. Flask and GeoAlchemy2

Python has always had strong internet capabilities. The standard library includes models for HTTP processing, STMP messages, and URL requests. Thousands of third-party modules have been written to extend or improve the built-in web functionality. Over time, a few modules coalesced into Python web frameworks—code libraries written to manage the creation and maintenance of complex and dynamic websites.

To better understand how to use a Python web framework and how to add geospatial capabilities, we'll implement the Flask Model View Controller (MVC) framework. A pure Python web framework, Flask can be combined with SQLAlchemy, GeoAlchemy2, and the Jinja2 HTML template system to create geospatially-enabled web pages.

In this chapter, you will learn about:

  • The Flask web framework
  • SQLAlchemy database management
  • GeoAlchemy2
  • Connecting to PostGIS using object-relational mapping (ORM)
  • The Jinja2 web page template system