Writing xbase .dbf files with Python ?

[Sean True]

On Tue, 3 Jul 2001 15:20:01 +0200, Gregor Hoffleit
<gregor at mediasupervision.de> wrote:

>Just for confirmation: There is no Python module available that's able
>to write/modify xbase .dbf files, right ?
>
>(I'm not interested in pointers to the various read-only modules ;-)
>
>    Gregor

There is pretty good support for .dbf files in a component of GDAL
(http://www.remotesensing.org/gdal/).

"GDAL - Geospatial Data Abstraction Library
GDAL is a translator library for raster geospatial data formats that
is released under an Open Source license. As a library, it presents a
single abstract data model to the calling application for all
supported formats."

The key here is that .DBF is the standard format for storing
geographically linked data attributes in one of the GIS industry
standard formats (shapefile). You can find the relevant pieces, which
are a C library and a SWIG wrapper in  the source distribution for
GDAL in the location \gdal\frmts\shapelib\pyshapelib-0.1, for a fairly
recent release. I use the functions for both reading and writing.
This wrapper is not intertwined (much!) with the rest of GDAL.

Works for me but ... YMMV.

Sean True
WebReply.Com, Inc.