Appending point values with pyshp?

Question

I would like to generate a .shp with five points using shapefile available through pyshp. However, when I loop through my list I get only the last value. This makes sense as I did not append any of the points to an empty list (e.g. new_shp = [])

import shapefile as sf
import os

filename2 = 'test/point10'
lis = [(33.21, -122.15, 'france'), (35.31, -122.15, 'germany'), (35.41, -123.15, 'Hawaii'), (30.51, -122.15, 'Philippines'),(32.30, -122.15, 'Texas')]
for l in lis:
    w = sf.Writer(sf.POINT)
    w.point(l[0], l[1])
    w.field('location')
    w.record(l[2], 'Point')
    w.save(filename2)

# create the PRJ file
prj = open("%s.prj" % filename2, "w")
epsg = 'GEOGCS["WGS 84",DATUM["WGS_1984",SPHEROID["WGS 84",6378137,298.257223563]],PRIMEM["Greenwich",0],UNIT["degree",0.0174532925199433]]'
prj.write(epsg)
prj.close()

I am assumming that I have to append all the points somewhere in the for loop, but I don't understand how to actually append it. How do I effectively loop through lis to get a .shp file with all five points?

Answer 1

It looks like you're creating a single point and constantly overwriting the shapefile with just that single point file. Try moving your instance of the sf.Writer class before your for loop and saving filename2 after the for loop.

w = sf.Writer(sf.POINT)
for l in lis:
    w.point(l[0], l[1])
    w.field('location')
    w.record(l[2], 'Point')
w.save(filename2)