Preface

From Python programming good practices to the advanced use of analysis packages, this book teaches how to write applications that will perform complex geoprocessing tasks that can be replicated and reused. The book contains three sample applications. Chapter 1 shows how to prepare a development environment. From Chapter 2 to Chapter 4, the reader goes deep into Python functionality using classes, inheritance, and other resources in order to read, manipulate, combine, and search information in vector data. Chapter 5 to Chapter 7 presents techniques to render beautiful maps, and handle and analyze raster data. In the final three chapters, the book approaches code optimization and presents solutions to handle large datasets common in geoprocessing tasks. All the examples are modular and can be rearranged to achieve countless different results. During the book, the code is deduced step by step until it reaches the final form. The reader is led to edit, change, and improve the code, experimenting with different solutions and organizations, subtly learning the mental process of the development of a geoprocessing application.