Converting ESRI SHP to MapInfo TAB via Python QGIS 2.18.1

Question

I am attempting to convert a few files from ESRI Shapefiles to MapInfo Tab via python. As I understand, the 'gdalogr:convertformat' processing algorithm can be used for this. My code looks something like this at the moment...

def convert_layer(layer,filetype, save_location):
    from processing.core.Processing import Processing
    Processing.initialize()
    print "Converting", layer, "to Mapinfo TAB..."
    processing.tools.general.runalg('gdalogr:convertformat',layer, filetype, "", save_location)

convert_layer("path/to/layer.shp", 5, "path/to/tab")

When I run this, QGIS reports that the conversion was successful, however no files are placed in the output folder.

To make matters more confusing, this same process seems to work fine in QGIS 2.14.

Has something changed between 2.14 and 2.18?

Answer 1

If you're running your code in the Python Console in QGIS, you can shorten your code to:

import processing
def convert_layer(layer, filetype, save_location):
    print "Converting", layer, "to Mapinfo TAB..."
    processing.runalg('gdalogr:convertformat', layer, filetype, "", save_location)

convert_layer("path/to/layer", 5, "path/to/tab")

---

I tested the following code in QGIS 2.18.2 for Windows 7 64-bit and received a .tab file as output:

convert_layer("C:/Users/Me/Desktop/point_example.shp", 5, "C:/Users/Me/Desktop/output")

See if it works for you.