How to create empty polygon shapefiles with the same field names using python?

Question

I'm new to python scripting in GIS and I have a list with species names, for every species in the list I want to create an empty polygon shapefile with the same fields inside the attribute. I read How to create a new Shapefile with the same attributes as an existing one? but for about 650 polygons its very difficult to get done by hand.

Ideally I would like to done this by using python.

Can anyone help me?

Answer 1

Ok, this is do able (If I understand correctly). Here is what I am thinking. Make 1 master shapefile with all the attributes. Create a csv with your list. Use python to read each line (species name) in the csv (use a for loop), use a copy function from ArcGIS or QGIS to copy the master shapefile and use the species name as the ouput name.

The following code uses Arcgis 10+

import os
import arcpy
import csv

# Set environment settings
arcpy.env.workspace = r"D:\Working"

# Variable for the species list
SPECIES_LIST = r"D:\Working\SpeciesList.csv"

# Variable for the Master Shapefile
MASTER_SHP = r"D:\Working\Master_Shapefile.shp"

# Output location for the shapefiles
OUTPUT_DIR = r"D:\Working\Species_Shapefiles"

# Opens and reads csv list
with open(SPECIES_LIST) as speciesLst:

    reader = csv.DictReader(speciesLst)

        # Loops through species from list
        for row in reader:

        # Variable to store the species name from the name column in the csv
        species_name = row['name']

        # Output file path for the new shapefile
        out_feature_class = os.path.join(OUTPUT_DIR, "{}.shp".format(species_name))

        # Prints message to screen
        arcpy.AddMessage("....Creating {} Shapefile...".format(species_name))

        # Function to copy the master .shp
        arcpy.CopyFeatures_management(MASTER_SHP,out_feature_class)

# Prints message to screen
arcpy.AddMessage("....Finished Creating Shapefiles...")

The following images are the various stages of the process.

Set-up of working Directory

Populating csv file

Script being run in the python shell

New shapefile based on the csv list

Hope this helps.