Eric,
Why not package that script up and upload it to PyPI? I've seen other
packages of scripts in the index, and I'll be happy to help you learn
how to do it.
I've seen Arc users reinventing functions from os.path, but writing
your own XML parser takes the cake. I suppose if one were a
programming book writer or a trainer, one would see this as a
underserved market?
Cheers,
On Feb 8, 2010, at 5:16 PM, Eric Wolf wrote:
ESRI seems to yank any python scripts that don't use the
arcgisscripting module. I had a nice python script for generating
contiguous cartograms that only relied on OGR on ArcScripts and it
was taken down. It might have been because I actually included
gdal.dll in the ZIP file - but I think it's because I didn't use
their programming model. I actually have a version of the code that
uses arcgisscripting, but it's much slower. First, the license
checks that occur with you execute "import arcgisscripting" take
longer than the entire process using OGR. Second, arcgisscripting
imposes a cursor model on all operations to iterate through features
without decent buffering.
Finally, in the world of programming, ESRI wants to restrict Python
to just a "glue" language to automate the geoprocessing methods in
the ArcToolbox (sort of like their old Avenue language). To really
work with their data models, you have to use a COM language like
VB.NET. This sucks because you can't directly work with things like
their geometric network models in Python. I know, there's
IronPython, but that seems like even more layers upon layers.
I wish ESRI would accept Python as a "real" language. I'd be more
likely to use their tools!
-Eric
-=--=---=----=----=---=--=-=--=---=----=---=--=-=-
Eric B. Wolf New! 720-334-7734
USGS Geographer
Center of Excellence in GIScience
PhD Student
CU-Boulder - Geography
GPG Public Key: http://www.h4h.net/ebwolf.public.key.txt
On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 3:11 AM, gene <[email protected]> wrote:
I have examined some Python scripts on the Arcscripts site and they
seem horribly complicated. For example the script "Convert Files GPS
(KML, GPX) to Shapefiles" (http://arcscripts.esri.com/details.asp?
dbid=16797) requires 117 lines of code to extract the placemarks and
geometries of a kml file without using any standard module to read
xml.
I think they misrepresent python using only:
"import arcgisscripting"
I sent the following email based on a sample of keytree by Sean
Gillies
"when you read a kml file, why not use the standard modules?
1) to find Placemarks in kml files:
from xml.etree import ElementTree
tree = ElementTree.parse(open('your.kml', 'rb'))
kmlns = tree.getroot().tag.split('}')[0][1:]
placemarks = tree.findall('*/{%s}Placemark' % kmlns)
and you have all the placemarks
2) using keytree and shapely gives you the geometry
p0 = placemarks[0]
import keytree
f = keytree.feature(p0)
from shapely.geometry import asShape
shape = asShape(f.geometry)
shape.wkt
exemple of results:
'POINT (21.9725000000000001 32.8962999999999965)'"
--
Sean
