Book Image

Python Geospatial Development - Second Edition - Second Edition

By : Erik Westra
Book Image

Python Geospatial Development - Second Edition - Second Edition

By: Erik Westra

Overview of this book

Geospatial development links your data to places on the Earth's surface. Writing geospatial programs involves tasks such as grouping data by location, storing and analyzing large amounts of spatial information, performing complex geospatial calculations, and drawing colorful interactive maps. In order to do this well, you'll need appropriate tools and techniques, as well as a thorough understanding of geospatial concepts such as map projections, datums and coordinate systems. Python Geospatial Development - Second Edition teaches you everything you need to know about writing geospatial applications using Python. No prior knowledge of geospatial concepts, tools or techniques is required. The book guides you through the process of installing and using various toolkits, obtaining geospatial data for use in your programs, and building complete and sophisticated geospatial applications in Python. Python Geospatial Development teaches you everything you need to know about writing geospatial applications using Python. No prior knowledge of geospatial concepts, tools or techniques is required. The book guides you through the process of installing and using various toolkits, obtaining geospatial data for use in your programs, and building complete and sophisticated geospatial applications in Python. This book provides an overview of the major geospatial concepts, data sources and toolkits. It teaches you how to store and access spatial data using Python, how to perform a range of spatial calculations, and how to store spatial data in a database. Because maps are such an important aspect of geospatial programming, the book teaches you how to build your own “slippy map” interface within a web application, and finishes with the detailed construction of a geospatial data editor using Geodjango. Whether you want to write quick utilities to solve spatial problems, or develop sophisticated web applications based around maps and geospatial data, this book includes everything you need to know.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Python Geospatial Development
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Spatially-enabled databases


In a sense, almost any database can be used to store geospatial data: simply convert a geometry to WKT format and store the results in a text column. But while this would allow you to store geospatial data in a database, it wouldn't let you query it in any useful way. All you could do is retrieve the raw WKT text and convert it back to a geometry object, one record at a time.

A spatially-enabled database, on the other hand, is aware of the notion of space, and allows you to work with spatial objects and concepts directly. In particular, a spatially-enabled database allows you to do the following:

  • Store spatial datatypes (points, lines, polygons, and so on) directly in the database, in the form of a geometry column.

  • Perform spatial queries on your data. For example:

    select all landmarks within 10 km of the city named "San Francisco"
  • Perform spatial joins on your data. For example:

    select all cities and their associated countries by joining cities and countries on (city...