Getting available GDAL raster drivers in Python

Question

How to fetch the available GDAL raster drivers in Python? (The equivalent of gdal_translate --formats using the command line utilities.)

Answer 1

A one liner to get all drivers (GDAL + OGR) (more or less 210 drivers)

python -c "from osgeo import gdal;print('\n'.join(sorted([gdal.GetDriver(i).GetDescription() for i in range(gdal.GetDriverCount())])))"

You can also filter drivers to get only GDAL one using the following (or you will not get the same number of drivers output as gdal_translate --formats e.g 136 on my machine)

I also display if driver support only raster or both raster and vector, I also display the other capabilities (read/write, support vsi,...). The logic is a port of the equivalent C++ code

from osgeo import gdal 

all_driver_names = [gdal.GetDriver(i).GetDescription() for i in range(gdal.GetDriverCount())] 

gdal_driver_names = [driver_name for driver_name in all_driver_names if gdal.GetDriverByName(driver_name).GetMetadataItem('DCAP_RASTER') == 'YES']

driver_type = {
    'DCAP_RASTER': 'raster',
    'DCAP_MULTIDIM_RASTER': 'multidimensional raster',
    'DCAP_VECTOR': 'vector',
    'DCAP_GNM': 'geography network'
}

for driver_name in gdal_driver_names:
    driver = gdal.GetDriverByName(driver_name)
    driver_shortname = driver.ShortName # Get short name
    driver_types = ','.join([driver_type[t] for t in driver_type.keys() if driver.GetMetadataItem(t) == 'YES']) # Get if driver support raster and vector or only raster

    pszRFlag = ""
    if driver.GetMetadataItem('DCAP_OPEN') == 'YES':
        pszRFlag = "r";
    
    pszWFlag = ""
    if driver.GetMetadataItem('DCAP_CREATE') == 'YES':
        pszWFlag = "w+";
    elif driver.GetMetadataItem('DCAP_CREATECOPY') == 'YES':
        pszWFlag = "w";
    else:
        pszWFlag = "o";

    pszVirtualIO = ""
    if driver.GetMetadataItem('DCAP_VIRTUALIO') == 'YES':
        pszVirtualIO = "v";
    
    pszSubdatasets = ""
    if driver.GetMetadataItem('DMD_SUBDATASETS') == 'YES':
        pszSubdatasets = "s";

    driver_longname = driver.LongName # Get Long name
    print(f"{driver_shortname} -{driver_types}- ({pszRFlag}{pszWFlag}{pszVirtualIO}{pszSubdatasets}): {driver_longname}")

Answer 2

Checking the Python docs I see:

• gdal.GetDriverCount(), returns an int
• gdal.GetDriver(int i), returns a Driver()
• gdal.Driver(), has ShortName and LongName attributes

So chaining them together:

import gdal


def list_drivers():
    n = gdal.GetDriverCount()
    for i in range(n):
        driver = gdal.GetDriver(i)
        print('{:03d}: {} - {}'.format(i, driver.ShortName, driver.LongName))


if __name__ == '__main__':
    list_drivers()