can a shape object merge in changes?

[Rick Graves]

Hey,

The State of Oregon put out two sets of files, a main shapefile and a later shapefile of "area changes".

Does the shape object already have a method that can handle merging in the changes to arrive at the final shapefile?

If you want to see for yourself, the files should be here:

http://www.leg.state.or.us/redistricting/

Except that web site is not working for me at the moment.  But the Oregon shape files are available here:

http://www.srrproject.org/resources/redistricting-shapefiles/

(Click on Oregon to get the link.  If you do not instantly know which one is Oregon, Oregon is on the west coast just north of California.  You can hover the mouse and a tip will display telling you which state is under the pointer.)

The zip for Oregon includes two sets of files, Congressional_Districts.* and Congressional_Area_Changes.*. 

The bbox of the changes shapefile is not as big as that of the Congressional_Districts shapefile, and the changes shapefile clearly does not cover the whole state, so I cannot rely on the changes shapefile alone.

Does the shape object already have a method that can handle this?  (I thought I should ask before trying to do it myself.)

Thanks,

Rick Graves

[Joel Lawhead]

Rick,

The shape object doesn't have any sort of merge capability. The whole library just reads and writes data.

But as you know once you have your data available as pure Python objects a whole new world opens up.

If you build a merge method I'd love to see it. I've been slowly working on pure python geometry operations similar to JTS/JSTS/CGAL/GEOS but progress is slow.

Thanks for using pyshp.

- Joel

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Joel Lawhead, PMP
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