Upgrading one of my GIS Python tool which uses GDAL/OGR to read vectors and rasters datasets, I've installed the last GDAL pypi package in version 2.1.3.
Until now, I do:
driver = ogr.GetDriverByName(str("ESRI Shapefile"))
source_ogr = driver.Open(shp_path, 0)
# or directly source_ogr = ogr.Open(shp_path, 0)
print(type(source_ogr))
>>> <class 'osgeo.ogr.DataSource'>
But when I checked the help, I see:
print(help(driver.Open))
[...]
NOTE: Starting with GDAL 2.0, it is *NOT* safe to cast the returned
handle to OGRDataSource*. If a C++ object is needed, the handle should
be cast to GDALDataset*. Similarly, the returned OGRSFDriverH handle
should be cast to GDALDriver*, and NOT* OGRSFDriver*.
Deprecated Use GDALOpenEx() in GDAL 2.0
[...]
And looking for more information, RFC 46 says:
A global pass has been made to in-tree OGR drivers that have to open a file to determine if they recognize it. They have been converted to GDALDriver to accept a GDALOpenInfo argument and they now use its pabyHeader field to examine the first bytes of files. The number of system calls realated to file access (open/stat), in order to determine that a file is not recognized by any OGR driver, has now dropped from 46 in GDAL 1.11 to 1. The converted drivers are : AeronavFAA, ArcGEN, AVCBin, AVCE00, BNA, CSV, DGN, EDIGEO, ESRI Shapefile, GeoJSON, GeoRSS, GML, GPKG, GPSBabel, GPX, GTM, HTF, ILI1, ILI2, KML, LIBKML, MapInfo? File, MySQL, NAS, NTF, OpenAIR, OSM, PDS, REC, S57, SDTS, SEGUKOOA, SEGY, SOSI, SQLite, SUA, SVG, TIGER, VFK, VRT, WFS
Indeed, using gdal.OpenEx it seems to work:
source_gdal = gdal.OpenEx(shp_path, 0)
pringt(type(source_gdal))
>>> <class 'osgeo.gdal.Dataset'>
And two objects are not identical:
print(source_ogr == source_gdal)
>>> False
Which method is better?
==== EDIT after first comments
# with OGR: note the GetName method
driver = ogr.GetDriverByName(str("OpenFileGDB"))
src = driver.Open(source_path, 0)
print(type(src), dir(src), len(dir(src)))
>>> <class 'osgeo.ogr.DataSource'> ['CommitTransaction', 'CopyLayer', 'CreateLayer', 'DeleteLayer', 'Dereference', 'Destroy', 'ExecuteSQL', 'FlushCache', 'GetDescription', 'GetDriver', 'GetLayer', 'GetLayerByIndex', 'GetLayerByName', 'GetLayerCount', 'GetMetadata', 'GetMetadataDomainList', 'GetMetadataItem', 'GetMetadata_Dict', 'GetMetadata_List', 'GetName', 'GetRefCount', 'GetStyleTable', 'GetSummaryRefCount', 'Reference', 'Release', 'ReleaseResultSet', 'RollbackTransaction', 'SetDescription', 'SetMetadata', 'SetMetadataItem', 'SetStyleTable', 'StartTransaction', 'SyncToDisk', 'TestCapability', '__class__', '__del__', '__delattr__', '__dict__', '__doc__', '__format__', '__getattribute__', '__getitem__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__len__', '__module__', '__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__setattr__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__subclasshook__', '__swig_destroy__', '__weakref__', 'name', 'this', 'thisown'] 59
# with GDAL: note that the method list is different and GetName method is missing
src = gdal.OpenEx(source_path, 0)
print(type(src), dir(src), len(dir(src)))
>>> <class 'osgeo.gdal.Dataset'> ['AddBand', 'BeginAsyncReader', 'BuildOverviews', 'CommitTransaction', 'CopyLayer', 'CreateLayer', 'CreateMaskBand', 'DeleteLayer', 'EndAsyncReader', 'ExecuteSQL', 'FlushCache', 'GetDescription', 'GetDriver', 'GetFileList', 'GetGCPCount', 'GetGCPProjection', 'GetGCPs', 'GetGeoTransform', 'GetLayer', 'GetLayerByIndex', 'GetLayerByName', 'GetLayerCount', 'GetMetadata', 'GetMetadataDomainList', 'GetMetadataItem', 'GetMetadata_Dict', 'GetMetadata_List', 'GetProjection', 'GetProjectionRef', 'GetRasterBand', 'GetStyleTable', 'GetSubDatasets', 'GetTiledVirtualMem', 'GetTiledVirtualMemArray', 'GetVirtualMem', 'GetVirtualMemArray', 'RasterCount', 'RasterXSize', 'RasterYSize', 'ReadAsArray', 'ReadRaster', 'ReadRaster1', 'ReleaseResultSet', 'RollbackTransaction', 'SetDescription', 'SetGCPs', 'SetGeoTransform', 'SetMetadata', 'SetMetadataItem', 'SetProjection', 'SetStyleTable', 'StartTransaction', 'TestCapability', 'WriteRaster', '__class__', '__del__', '__delattr__', '__dict__', '__doc__', '__format__', '__getattribute__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__module__', '__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__setattr__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__subclasshook__', '__swig_destroy__', '__weakref__', 'this', 'thisown'] 76
