Add data inside a shapefile incrementally with ogr2ogr

Question

Let's say I have the two following CSV files:

file1.csv:

Latitude,Longitude,name
-23.5592201171,-46.5417389180,one
-23.5666778463,-46.5500715205,two

file2.csv:

Latitude,Longitude,name
-23.5703366507,-46.5483625224,three
-23.5840397199,-46.5147095166,four

I know I can convert them individually to shapefiles using ogr2ogr using the following command:

ogr2ogr -oo X_POSSIBLE_NAMES=Lon* -oo Y_POSSIBLE_NAMES=Lat*  -f "ESRI Shapefile" output.shp file1.csv

However, if I try using this same command a second time with my second CSV file:

ogr2ogr -oo X_POSSIBLE_NAMES=Lon* -oo Y_POSSIBLE_NAMES=Lat*  -f "ESRI Shapefile" output.shp file2.csv

My old shapefile will be overwritten by the contents of my second CSV. I'd like to continuously add more data inside this shapefile as new CSV files arrive. So the final result inside my CSV would be the concatenation of my CSV files:

Latitude,Longitude,name
-23.5592201171,-46.5417389180,one
-23.5666778463,-46.5500715205,two
-23.5703366507,-46.5483625224,three
-23.5840397199,-46.5147095166,four

I'd like to avoid merging these CSVs before converting them to Shapefile. Is there any way of adding new data to a Shapefile considering the new CSVs will all have the same columns of the first original csv that created the first Shapefile?

Answer 1

You must use ogr2ogr with options -update, -append, and -nln https://gdal.org/programs/ogr2ogr.html

First command:

ogr2ogr -oo X_POSSIBLE_NAMES=Lon* -oo Y_POSSIBLE_NAMES=Lat*  -f "ESRI Shapefile" output.shp file1.csv

Second command:

ogr2ogr -oo X_POSSIBLE_NAMES=Lon* -oo Y_POSSIBLE_NAMES=Lat*  -f "ESRI Shapefile" output.shp file2.csv -update -append -nln output

Check that output.shp contains 4 features now:

ogrinfo output.shp -al -so
INFO: Open of `output.shp'
      using driver `ESRI Shapefile' successful.

Layer name: output
Metadata:
  DBF_DATE_LAST_UPDATE=2021-12-18
Geometry: Point
Feature Count: 4
Extent: (-46.550072, -23.584040) - (-46.514710, -23.559220)
Layer SRS WKT:
(unknown)
Latitude: Real (24.15)
Longitude: Real (24.15)
name: String (80.0)