dwca2gis

What is it ?

A collection of tools to convert Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) files to other file formats and tools. In its current form, it contains the following scripts:

• dwca2cartodb: A simple command-line tool that allows to directly import a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) file into CartoDB to allow quick & easy exploration, online collaboration and use of biodiversity data.
• dwca2shp: A command-line tool to convert a DwC-A files to a Shapefile.

Status

IN DEVELOPMENT. Basic use works, but its currently missing important pieces and features.

Install & Requirements

For now, clone this repository and install the following dependencies via easy_install / pip. Once the project is a little more mature, a proper Python package will be availabe on PyPI.

• cartodb==0.6
• python-dwca-reader==0.1.1
• pyshp==1.1.4
• pyproj==1.9.3
• GDAL==1.9.1

dwca2cartodb

Prerequisites:

• a free account at CartoDB.
• a DwC-A file to import(for example from this list of IPT instances).

1. Run dwca2cartodb:

$ python dwca2cartodb.py --domain <YOUR_CARTODB_DOMAIN> --api-key <YOUR_API_KEY> --table <YOUR_TABLE_NAME> dwcafile.zip.zip

You can add "--truncate" to truncate existing CartoDB table before importing new data (useful for multiple imports in a row).

2. Visualize and share your data online:

dwca2shp

Example use

$ python dwca2gis dwcafile.zip ./my_shapefile

Will output a Shapefile in ./my_shapefile/shapefile.shp using the EPSG:4326 CRS.

You can also generate a Shapefile using another CRS:

$ python dwca2gis dwcafile.zip ./my_shapefile --crs epsg:3857

Will output a Shepefile using the famous EPSG:3857 CRS (aka Sperical Mercator, Google projection, 900913, EPSG:3587, ...)

For each Darwin Core term in the "Core file" of the source DwC-A, an attribute will be set in the resulting shapefile.

Running tests

The test suite uses nose:

$ pip install nose
$ nosetests