Rasterize vector file using gdal.RasterizeLayer() without losing attribute information in python

Question

Is it possible to rasterize a vector file with gdal.RasterizeLayer(), saving attribute as Raster value ? Like gdal_rasterize can do with :

gdal_rasterize -a attribute -ts rasterXsize rasterYsize -l layername shapePath rasterPath

As suggested here, we can rasterize the attribute in color levels (0-255) on the 3 bands, but my objective is to keep the attribute value intact on a single raster band. I found many other examples here but None fit my goal.

Answer 1

Solved using

Programmatic raster-vector calculation

I had some troubles using directly gdal.RasterizeLayer() on layers like propose here in the cookbook but it seems that using "MEM" data source and finally writing it on the disk is maybe better.

My solution (which is one of many possible solutions)

def rasterizer(shapePath, rasterPath, attribute, gridModelPath):
    '''Rasterize a shapefile using its attribute value
        @param shapePath    Input shapefile
        @param rasterPath   Output rasterfile
        @param attribute    Attribute fieldname (string)
        @gridModelPath      grid used to as reference'''
    # Import data, geotransform and projection from the model grid
    data, geotransform, prj_wkt = rasterReader(gridModelPath)
    RasterYSize, RasterXSize = data.shape

    # Import data from the vector layer
    driver = ogr.GetDriverByName('ESRI Shapefile')
    vector_source = driver.Open(shapePath,0)
    source_layer = vector_source.GetLayer(0)

    target_ds = gdal.GetDriverByName( 'MEM' ).Create( "", RasterXSize, RasterYSize, 1, gdal.GDT_Int32)
    target_ds.SetGeoTransform( geotransform )
    target_ds.SetProjection( prj_wkt )
    # Rasterise!
    err = gdal.RasterizeLayer(target_ds, [1], source_layer,
        options=["ATTRIBUTE=%s" % attribute ])
    if err != 0:
        raise Exception("error rasterizing layer: %s" % err)
    data = target_ds.ReadAsArray()
    # Write your data on the disk
    rasterWriter(data, rasterPath, geotransform, prj_wkt, gdal.GDT_Int32)