[GIS] Reading raw data into geopandas

fionageopandaspandaspython

Is it possible to read raw data into a geopandas GeoDataFrame, a la a pandas DataFrame?

For example, the following works:

import io
import pandas as pd
import requests
data = requests.get("https://data.cityofnewyork.us/api/geospatial/arq3-7z49?method=export&format=GeoJSON")
pd.read_json(io.BytesIO(data.content))

The following does not:

import geopandas as gpd
import io
import requests
data = requests.get("https://data.cityofnewyork.us/api/geospatial/arq3-7z49?method=export&format=GeoJSON")
gpd.read_file(io.BytesIO(data.content))

In other words, is it possible to read geospatial data that's in memory without saving that data to disk first?

Best Answer

You can pass the json directly to the GeoDataFrame constructor:

import geopandas as gpd
import requests
data = requests.get("https://data.cityofnewyork.us/api/geospatial/arq3-7z49?method=export&format=GeoJSON")
gdf = gpd.GeoDataFrame(data.json())
gdf.head()

Outputs:

                                            features               type
0  {'type': 'Feature', 'geometry': {'type': 'Poin...  FeatureCollection
1  {'type': 'Feature', 'geometry': {'type': 'Poin...  FeatureCollection
2  {'type': 'Feature', 'geometry': {'type': 'Poin...  FeatureCollection
3  {'type': 'Feature', 'geometry': {'type': 'Poin...  FeatureCollection
4  {'type': 'Feature', 'geometry': {'type': 'Poin...  FeatureCollection

For supported single-file formats or zipped shapefiles, you can use fiona.BytesCollection and GeoDataFrame.from_features:

import requests
import fiona
import geopandas as gpd

url = 'http://www.geopackage.org/data/gdal_sample.gpkg'
request = requests.get(url)
b = bytes(request.content)
with fiona.BytesCollection(b) as f:
    crs = f.crs
    gdf = gpd.GeoDataFrame.from_features(f, crs=crs)
    print(gdf.head())
and for zipped shapefiles (supported as of fiona 1.7.2) 
url = 'https://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/STATE/2010/tl_2010_31_state10.zip'
request = requests.get(url)
b = bytes(request.content)
with fiona.BytesCollection(b) as f:
    crs = f.crs
    gdf = gpd.GeoDataFrame.from_features(f, crs=crs)
    print(gdf.head())

You can find out what formats Fiona supports using something like:

import fiona
for name, access in fiona.supported_drivers.items():
    print('{}: {}'.format(name, access))

And a hacky workaround for reading in-memory zipped data in fiona 1.7.1 or earlier:

import requests
import uuid
import fiona
import geopandas as gpd
from osgeo import gdal

request = requests.get('https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/blob/trunk/autotest/ogr/data/poly.zip?raw=true')
vsiz = '/vsimem/{}.zip'.format(uuid.uuid4().hex) #gdal/ogr requires a .zip extension

gdal.FileFromMemBuffer(vsiz,bytes(request.content))
with fiona.Collection(vsiz, vsi='zip', layer ='poly') as f:
    gdf = gpd.GeoDataFrame.from_features(f, crs=f.crs)
    print(gdf.head())
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