Is there an equivalent argument to index_col in geopandas.read_file() function?

Question

I am looking for the equivalent argument to pandas.read_csv(index_col='column') in the geopandas.read_file() function. My goal is to read a shapefile and specify the index column. However, the following does not set any index column and returns the same GeoDataframe as calling the function without the argument:

import geopandas as gpd

gdf = gpd.read_file('test.shp', index_col='column')

The documentation of the read_file function does not list index_col as an argument and states that one can specify keyword arguments that are going to be passed to the fiona.open function (but not to any pandas.read_* function).

A workaround is to use the set_index() method after reading the file:

import geopandas as gpd

gdf = gpd.read_file('test.shp')
gdf = gdf.set_index('column')

# or

gdf = gpd.read_file('test.shp').set_index('column')

However, it feels like specifying the index should be possible directly from the read_file function.

Answer 1

GeoPandas does not have such an option (as of 0.7.0 and likely 0.8.0), so the workaround with .set_index is the best option. If it did have the option, it would likely just do the same under the hood, so there will be no difference anyway.