Installing GDAL and OGR

GDAL (Geospatial Data Abstraction Library) is composed of two packages that come together: OGR handles geospatial vector file formats, including coordinate system transformations and vector operations. GDAL is the raster part of the library, and in version 1.11, it comes packed with 139 drivers that can read, and some even create rasters. GDAL also comes packed with functions for raster transformations and calculations such as resizing, clipping, reprojecting, and so on.

In the following tables, there's an excerpt of the list of GDAL and OGR drivers with the most common formats that you may find:

Long format name	Code	Creation
Arc/Info ASCII Grid	AAIGrid	Yes
Arc/Info Export E00 GRID	E00GRID	No
ENVI .hdr Labelled Raster	ENVI	Yes
Generic Binary (.hdr Labelled)	GENBIN	No
Oracle Spatial GeoRaster	GEORASTER	Yes
GSat File Format	GFF	No
Graphics Interchange Format (.gif)	GIF	Yes
GMT Compatible netCDF	GMT	Yes
GRASS ASCII Grid	GRASSASCIIGrid	No
Golden Software ASCII Grid	GSAG	Yes
Golden Software Binary Grid	GSBG	Yes
Golden Software Surfer 7 Binary Grid	GS7BG	Yes
TIFF / BigTIFF / GeoTIFF (.tif)	GTiff	Yes
GXF (Grid eXchange File)	GXF	No
Erdas Imagine (.img)	HFA	Yes
JPEG JFIF (.jpg)	JPEG	Yes
NOAA Polar Orbiter Level 1b Data Set (AVHRR)	L1B	No
NOAA NGS Geoid Height Grids	NGSGEOID	No
NITF	NITF	Yes
NTv2 Datum Grid Shift	NTv2	Yes
PCI .aux Labelled	PAux	Yes
PCI Geomatics Database File	PCIDSK	Yes
PCRaster	PCRaster	Yes
Geospatial PDF	PDF	Yes
NASA Planetary Data System	PDS	No
Portable Network Graphics (.png)	PNG	Yes
R Object Data Store	R	Yes
Raster Matrix Format (*.rsw, .mtw)	RMF	Yes
RadarSat2 XML (product.xml)	RS2	No
Idrisi Raster	RST	Yes
SAGA GIS Binary format	SAGA	Yes
USGS SDTS DEM (*CATD.DDF)	SDTS	No
SGI Image Format	SGI	Yes
SRTM HGT Format	SRTMHGT	Yes
Terragen Heightfield (.ter)	TERRAGEN	Yes
USGS ASCII DEM / CDED (.dem)	USGSDEM	Yes
ASCII Gridded XYZ	XYZ	Yes

The following table describes the OGR drivers:

Format name	Code	Creation
Arc/Info Binary Coverage	AVCBin	No
Arc/Info .E00 (ASCII) Coverage	AVCE00	No
AutoCAD DXF	DXF	Yes
Comma Separated Value (.csv)	CSV	Yes
ESRI Shapefile	ESRI Shapefile	Yes
GeoJSON	GeoJSON	Yes
Géoconcept Export	Geoconcept	Yes
GeoRSS	GeoRSS	Yes
GML	GML	Yes
GMT	GMT	Yes
GPSBabel	GPSBabel	Yes
GPX	GPX	Yes
GPSTrackMaker (.gtm, .gtz)	GPSTrackMaker	Yes
Hydrographic Transfer Format	HTF	No
Idrisi Vector (.VCT)	Idrisi	No
KML	KML	Yes
Mapinfo File	MapInfo File	Yes
Microstation DGN	DGN	Yes
OpenAir	OpenAir	No
ESRI FileGDB	OpenFileGDB	No
PCI Geomatics Database File	PCIDSK	Yes
Geospatial PDF	PDF	Yes
PDS	PDS	No
PostgreSQL SQL dump	PGDump	Yes
U.S. Census TIGER/Line	TIGER	No

Note

You can find the full GDAL and OGR API documentation and the complete list of drivers at http://gdal.org/python/.

Windows

Again, we will use a wheel for the installation. Repeat the same procedure as before:

1. Go to http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/.
2. Now, search for GDAL and download the file named GDAL‑1.11.3‑cp27‑none‑win32.whl.
3. Finally, install it with pip, as we did before.

Ubuntu Linux

Perform the following steps:

1. Go to the terminal or open a new one.
2. Then, enter the following command:

   sudo apt-get install python-gdal