Creating Polygon Shapefile from list of X,Y coordinates using Python?

Question

I have a list of X,Y coordinates from a csv file, that represent a polygon. I´m trying to create a Polygon-Shapefile from this list. I´ve been trying around and found a possbility to write the list to a Point-Shapefile.

Unfortunately that is not enough for me. Is there any way to get the coordinates in a Polygon-shapefile straight away?

Following Brad´s suggestions I tried the following code:

for i in list:
    w = shapefile.Writer(shapefile.POLYGON)
    w.poly(parts=[list])
    w.field('F_FLD','C','40')
    w.field('S_FLD','C','40')
    w.record('First','Polygon')
    w.save('C:/Users/.../Desktop/Shape')

Unfortunately I´m getting an error message:

ShapefileException: Failed to write shapefile bounding box. Floats required.

Looks like there is a problem saving the shapefile to disk. This seems to be a similar question, but I couldn´t work out, how to get it going in my case.

Answer 1

From the pyshp documentation page:

>>> # Create a polygon shapefile
>>> w = shapefile.Writer(shapefile.POLYGON)
>>> w.poly(parts=[[[1,5],[5,5],[5,1],[3,3],[1,1]]])
>>> w.field('FIRST_FLD','C','40')
>>> w.field('SECOND_FLD','C','40')
>>> w.record('First','Polygon')
>>> w.save('shapefiles/test/polygon')

Just substitute your list for the parts= argument to Writer.poly, and set whatever fields you would like to associate with your shapefile.

Answer 2

This expands on the answer posted by BradHards:

The error message sounds like pyshp is expecting floats where it is not getting them. If your coordinate list is a set of ints, try casting them to floats:

shape = [[1,5], [5,5], [5,1], [3,3], [1,1]]
shape = [[float(coord) for coord in pair] for pair in shape]

Answer 3

One easy (one time) solution is to use the QuickWKT Plugin.

Transform your list into a EWKT string by adding a the header with the SRID and the type of geometry. Add a comma in the end of each XY pair.

SRID=4326;POLYGON
((
 30 10,
 10 20,
 20 40,
 40 40,
 30 10
))

Copy + paste the all thing to QuickWKT Plugin's dialog, and press OK.

Your polygon will be created in a memory layer in QGIS. After that, you can do whatever you want with it, including Save as... (Shapefile).

Answer 4

I just put together this piece of code to do this task. It uses a tab-delineated .ascii file as the input and creates a simple .shp file in an unspecified Lat Long projection. Hopefully it can help someone else trying to do this.

# ------------------------------------------------------
# IMPORTS
# ------------------------------------------------------

import os
import pandas as pd
from shapely.geometry import Polygon, mapping
from fiona import collection

# ------------------------------------------------------
# INPUTS
# ------------------------------------------------------

# Define path
path = os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(__file__))

# Set working directory
os.chdir(path)  

# Define file to convert
file = 'points.ascii'

# Define shp file schema
schema = { 'geometry': 'Polygon', 'properties': { 'Name': 'str' } }

# Read in data
data = pd.read_csv(file, sep='\t') 

# Define shp file to write to
shpOut = 'poly.shp'

# Create array for storing vertices
polyPoints = []

# Create shp file
with collection(shpOut, "w", "ESRI Shapefile", schema) as output:
    # Loop through dataframe and populate shp file
    for index, row in data.iterrows():
        
        # Add points to polyPoints
        polyPoints.append([row['Longitude'], row['Latitude']])

        # Define polygon
    polygon = Polygon(polyPoints)

    # Write output
    output.write({
        'properties': {'Name': 'Polygon_from_points' }, 
        'geometry': mapping(polygon)
    })