Storage, management and analysis of geospatial vector data as an ESRI shapefile is a common procedure of GIS and related professionals. The generation of these spatial files can be done not only on a desktop software but also by Python commands. We have created an applied example that shows the procedure in Python to create point, line, and polygon shapefiles from a csv file by the use of the Fiona library.

If you are a Windows user, it is recommended to have Fiona and other geospatial libraries installed under a Conda environment following this tutorial.

Tutorial

Python code

#import requires packages
import fiona
import pandas as pd

Create point shapefile

#import points from csv file
pointDf = pd.read_csv('../Txt//cropPoints.csv',header=0)
pointDf.head()

	X	Y	Name
0	-84.200969	9.480966	Plant1
1	-84.200841	9.480931	Plant2
2	-84.201841	9.481167	Plant3
3	-84.200862	9.479898	Plant4
4	-84.200657	9.479586	Plant5

# define schema
schema = {
    'geometry':'Point',
    'properties':[('Name','str')]
}

# explore available drivers
fiona.supported_drivers

{'AeronavFAA': 'r',
 'ARCGEN': 'r',
 'BNA': 'rw',
 'DXF': 'rw',
 'CSV': 'raw',
 'OpenFileGDB': 'r',
 'ESRIJSON': 'r',
 'ESRI Shapefile': 'raw',
 'FlatGeobuf': 'rw',
 'GeoJSON': 'raw',
 'GeoJSONSeq': 'rw',
 'GPKG': 'raw',
 'GML': 'rw',
 'OGR_GMT': 'rw',
 'GPX': 'rw',
 'GPSTrackMaker': 'rw',
 'Idrisi': 'r',
 'MapInfo File': 'raw',
 'DGN': 'raw',
 'PCIDSK': 'rw',
 'OGR_PDS': 'r',
 'S57': 'r',
 'SEGY': 'r',
 'SQLite': 'raw',
 'SUA': 'r',
 'TopoJSON': 'r'}

#structure of fiona object

fiona.open( fp, mode='r', driver=None, schema=None, crs=None, encoding=None, layer=None, vfs=None, enabled_drivers=None, crs_wkt=None, **kwargs, )

#open a fiona object
pointShp = fiona.open('../ShapeOut/cropPoints.shp', mode='w', driver='ESRI Shapefile',
          schema = schema, crs = "EPSG:4326")

#iterate over each row in the dataframe and save record
for index, row in pointDf.iterrows():
    rowDict = {
        'geometry' : {'type':'Point',
                     'coordinates': (row.X,row.Y)},
        'properties': {'Name' : row.Name},
    }
    pointShp.write(rowDict)
#close fiona object
pointShp.close()

Create line shapefile

#import line vertex from csv file
lineDf = pd.read_csv('../Txt/cropLine.csv',header=0)
lineDf.head()

	X	Y	Name
0	-84.201990	9.480380	Row1
1	-84.201928	9.480319	Row1
2	-84.201871	9.480261	Row1
3	-84.201820	9.480199	Row1
4	-84.201756	9.480133	Row1

# define schema
schema = {
    'geometry':'LineString',
    'properties':[('Name','str')]
}

#open a fiona object
lineShp = fiona.open('../ShapeOut/cropLine.shp', mode='w', driver='ESRI Shapefile',
          schema = schema, crs = "EPSG:4326")

#get list of points
xyList = []
rowName = ''
for index, row in lineDf.iterrows():
    xyList.append((row.X,row.Y))
    rowName = row.Name
xyList[:5]

[(-84.2019904893069, 9.48038022019686),
 (-84.2019279965972, 9.48031926246447),
 (-84.2018711206848, 9.48026145133191),
 (-84.2018196550243, 9.48019910289781),
 (-84.2017559092017, 9.48013268586072)]

#save record and close shapefile
rowDict = {
'geometry' : {'type':'LineString',
                 'coordinates': xyList},
'properties': {'Name' : rowName},
}
lineShp.write(rowDict)
#close fiona object
lineShp.close()

Create polygon shapefile

#import line vertex from csv file
polyDf = pd.read_csv('../Txt/cropPoly.csv',header=0)
polyDf.head()

	X	Y	Name
0	-84.202396	9.480334	Border1
1	-84.202190	9.480555	Border1
2	-84.201886	9.480792	Border1
3	-84.201529	9.481153	Border1
4	-84.201307	9.481303	Border1

#show the last item
polyDf.tail()

	X	Y	Name
19	-84.201742	9.479385	Border1
20	-84.201863	9.479413	Border1
21	-84.202157	9.479673	Border1
22	-84.202398	9.479917	Border1
23	-84.202396	9.480334	Border1

# define schema
schema = {
    'geometry':'Polygon',
    'properties':[('Name','str')]
}

#open a fiona object
polyShp = fiona.open('../ShapeOut/cropPoly.shp', mode='w', driver='ESRI Shapefile',
          schema = schema, crs = "EPSG:4326")

#get list of points
xyList = []
rowName = ''
for index, row in polyDf.iterrows():
    xyList.append((row.X,row.Y))
    rowName = row.Name
xyList[:5]

[(-84.20239642444, 9.48033431305493),
 (-84.2021899231741, 9.48055508704213),
 (-84.2018864783201, 9.48079161161365),
 (-84.2015288437831, 9.48115260231102),
 (-84.2013071850694, 9.4813034753504)]

#save record and close shapefile
rowDict = {
'geometry' : {'type':'Polygon',
                 'coordinates': [xyList]}, #Here the xyList is in brackets
'properties': {'Name' : rowName},
}
polyShp.write(rowDict)
#close fiona object
polyShp.close()