Natural Earth. Accessing "GIS (ESRI shape file)" files from Python ? The Essential Python Modules for GIS. With ESRI’s use of Python as their scripting language and the proliferation of open source GIS, Python became one of the required languages for GIS developers and hobbyists alike.
What makes Python powerful is well documented throughout the web, but I want to highlight one very important aspects of Python today: Python Modules. Python Modules are code someone else has written and distributed, in order to make life easier for the rest of us. You may be familiar with the standard modules that come with Python, like math or datetime, but there are numerous more resources out there for the GIS minded developers.
I will be discussing some of the modules I find essential in my work apart from the famous ArcGISScripting module by ESRI: GDAL, numpy, NetworkX, xlrd and xlwt. Let’s dive in! Python et les Shapefiles.