[GIS] Access to SpatiaLite .dumpshp via Python

pythonspatialite

I'm trying to interact with a SpatiaLite database via Python on my Windows machine.

I've managed to connect to the database and load the SpatiaLite extension, which means that I can pass SQL queries in from my Python code e.g: 

from pysqlite2 import dbapi2 as sqlite
myPath = r"C:\SpatiaLite\test-2.3.sqlite"
conn = sqlite.connect(myPath)
conn.enable_load_extension(True)
curs = conn.cursor()
curs.execute("select load_extension('libspatialite-1.dll')")    
curs.execute("""SELECT name, peoples, AsText(Geometry) from Towns where
                peoples > 350000 order by peoples DESC""")
# Print the selected records
for row in curs:
    print row

So far so good. I'd now like to know how to export a table as a shapefile. Using the command prompt in spatialite.exe I can do this using .dumpshp, but I can't figure out how to access this command from Python. Any ideas, please?

I was hoping for something like this:

curs.execute("select dumpshp('Towns Geometry shape_towns CP1252 POINT')")

but perhaps it's more complicated than that?

Thanks very much!

Best Answer

You can use the command line spatialite_tool and embed it in python with subprocess module.

In command line

spatialite_tool -e -shp shape_towns -d test-2.3.sqlite -t Towns -g Geometry -c CP1252 --type POINT

In Python

import subprocess

subprocess.call(["spatialite_tool", "-e", "-shp", "shape_towns", "-d", "test-2.3.sqlite", "-t", "Towns", "-g", "Geometry", "-c", "CP1252", "--type", "POINT"])
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