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

Setting up the database


Assuming you have created a PostgreSQL template for PostGIS as described in the Prerequisites section of this chapter, setting up the PostGIS database for the ShapeEditor is trivial—simply type the following at the command prompt:

% createdb shapeeditor

Tip

If you don't have PostgreSQL's createdb command on your path, you will need to prefix this command with the directory where PostgreSQL's command-line tools are stored.

If your PostgreSQL installation requires you to supply a username when creating a database, you can do this by adding the -U command-line option, like this:

% createdb shapeeditor -U <username>

You will be prompted to enter the user's password, if it has one.

This will create a new database named shapeeditor, which we will use to hold the data for our ShapeEditor project.

All going well, you should now have a database named shapeeditor on your computer. Open up a command-line client to this database by typing:

% psql shapeeditor

Tip

You'll need...