Writing PostGIS vector data with OGR Python bindings

In this recipe, you will use Python and the Python bindings of the GDAL/OGR library to create a script for geocoding a list of the names of places using one of the GeoNames Web services (http://www.geonames.org/export/ws-overview.html). You will use the Wikipedia Full Text Search Web service (http://www.geonames.org/export/wikipedia-webservice.html#wikipediaSearch), which for a given search string returns the coordinates of the places matching that search string as the output and some other useful attributes from Wikipedia, including the Wikipedia page title and url.

The script should first create a PostGIS point layer named wikiplaces in which all of the locations and their attributes returned by the web service will be stored.

This recipe should give you the basis to use other similar web services, such as Google Maps, Yahoo! BOSS Geo Services, and so on, to get results in a similar way.

Before you start, please note the terms of use of...