Setting Default Nodata burn value with GDAL Rasterize Layer

Question

I am trying to rasterize a layer as follows:

attr = 'N_CT'

tif_driver = gdal.GetDriverByName('MEM')
raster = tif_driver.Create(path, x_res, y_res, num_bands, gdal.GDT_UInt16)

shp_driver = ogr.GetDriverByName('ESRI Shapefile')
shp_mem = shp_driver .Open('x.shp')

# loop through each layer in shapefile, add to raster band(s)
for idx in len(shp_mem.GetLayerCount()):
  lyr = shp_mem.GetLayer(i)
  gdal.RasterizeLayer(raster, [i+1], lyr, options=['ATTRIBUTE=' + attr])

*Do some raster computations*

# create .TIF
raster = createRaster(shp,'GTiff', path)

# configure band
band = raster.GetRasterBand(1)
band.Fill(NO_DATA_VALUE)
band.SetNoDataValue(NO_DATA_VALUE)

# write band
band.WriteArray(arr)

raster = None

What happens above is I rasterize a shapefile called 'x.shp' based on a field called N_CT (integers)

However, the output contains what I desire but surrounding it is what I imagine is no data (with value 0 - in black).

I could set my band no_data value to 0. However, is there a way I can change this default (0) to something that I don't need?

Answer 1

I found my solution. The issue was that I was setting the band.fill(NO_DATA) only when creating the final output.

In order to fix this, I simply had to set fill value at the time of rasterizing the layer