Toblerity/Fiona

Fiona reads and writes geographic data files

Python

1,249

1,548 commits

updated Oct 12, 2026

See the code

README

=====
Fiona
=====

.. image:: https://github.com/Toblerity/Fiona/actions/workflows/tests.yml/badge.svg
   :target: https://github.com/Toblerity/Fiona/actions/workflows/tests.yml
.. image:: https://github.com/Toblerity/Fiona/actions/workflows/test_gdal_latest.yml/badge.svg
   :target: https://github.com/Toblerity/Fiona/actions/workflows/test_gdal_latest.yml
.. image:: https://img.shields.io/pypi/v/fiona
   :target: https://pypi.org/project/fiona/
.. image:: https://api.securityscorecards.dev/projects/github.com/Toblerity/Fiona/badge
   :target: https://securityscorecards.dev/viewer/?uri=github.com/Toblerity/Fiona

Fiona streams simple feature data to and from GIS formats like GeoPackage and
Shapefile.

Fiona can read and write real-world data using multi-layered GIS formats,
zipped and in-memory virtual file systems, from files on your hard drive or in
cloud storage. This project includes Python modules and a command line
interface (CLI).

Fiona depends on `GDAL <https://gdal.org>`__ but is different from GDAL's own
`bindings <https://gdal.org/api/python_bindings.html>`__. Fiona is designed to
be highly productive and to make it easy to write code which is easy to read.

Installation
============

Fiona has several `extension modules
<https://docs.python.org/3/extending/extending.html>`__ which link against
libgdal. This complicates installation. Binary distributions (wheels)
containing libgdal and its own dependencies are available from the Python
Package Index and can be installed using pip.

.. code-block:: console

    pip install fiona

These wheels are mainly intended to make installation easy for simple
applications, not so much for production. They are not tested for compatibility
with all other binary wheels, conda packages, or QGIS, and omit many of GDAL's
optional format drivers. If you need, for example, GML support you will need to
build and install Fiona from a source distribution. It is possible to install
Fiona from source using pip (version >= 22.3) and the `--no-binary` option. A
specific GDAL installation can be selected by setting the GDAL_CONFIG
environment variable.

.. code-block:: console

    pip install -U pip
    pip install --no-binary fiona fiona

Many users find Anaconda and conda-forge a good way to install Fiona and get
access to more optional format drivers (like GML).

Fiona 1.10 requires Python 3.8 or higher and GDAL 3.4 or higher.

Python Usage
============

Features are read from and written to file-like ``Collection`` objects returned
from the ``fiona.open()`` function. Features are data classes modeled on the
GeoJSON format. They don't have any spatial methods of their own, so if you
want to transform them you will need Shapely or something like it. Here is an
example of using Fiona to read some features from one data file, change their
geometry attributes using Shapely, and write them to a new data file.

.. code-block:: python

    import fiona
    from fiona import Feature, Geometry
    from shapely.geometry import mapping, shape

    # Open a file for reading. We'll call this the source.
    with fiona.open(
        "zip+https://github.com/Toblerity/Fiona/files/11151652/coutwildrnp.zip"
    ) as src:

        # The file we'll write to must be initialized with a coordinate
        # system, a format driver name, and a record schema. We can get
        # initial values from the open source's profile property and then
        # modify them as we need.
        profile = src.profile
        profile["schema"]["geometry"] = "Point"
        profile["driver"] = "GPKG"

        # Open an output file, using the same format driver and coordinate
        # reference system as the source. The profile mapping fills in the
        # keyword parameters of fiona.open.
        with fiona.open("centroids.gpkg", "w", **profile) as dst:

            # Process only the feature records intersecting a box.
            for feat in src.filter(bbox=(-107.0, 37.0, -105.0, 39.0)):

                # Get the feature's centroid.
                centroid_shp = shape(feat.geometry).centroid
                new_geom = Geometry.from_dict(centroid_shp)

                # Write the feature out.
                dst.write(
                    Feature(geometry=new_geom, properties=f.properties)
                )

        # The destination's contents are flushed to disk and the file is
        # closed when its with block ends. This effectively
        # executes ``dst.flush(); dst.close()``.

CLI Usage
=========

Fiona's command line interface, named "fio", is documented at `docs/cli.rst
<https://github.com/Toblerity/Fiona/blob/main/docs/cli.rst>`__. The CLI has a
number of different commands. Its ``fio cat`` command streams GeoJSON features
from any dataset.

.. code-block:: console

    $ fio cat --compact tests/data/coutwildrnp.shp | jq -c '.'
    {"geometry":{"coordinates":[[[-111.73527526855469,41.995094299316406],...]]}}
    ...

Documentation
=============

For more details about this project, please see:

* Fiona `home page <https://github.com/Toblerity/Fiona>`__
* `Docs and manual <https://fiona.readthedocs.io/>`__
* `Examples <https://github.com/Toblerity/Fiona/tree/main/examples>`__
* Main `user discussion group <https://fiona.groups.io/g/main>`__
* `Developers discussion group <https://fiona.groups.io/g/dev>`__

Not written in Markdown, so it's shown here as plain text — view it formatted on GitHub.

cli
cython
gdal
gis
ogr
python
vector

Project health

Overall

5.8/10

Maintained

2/10

Code review

6/10

Contributors

10/10
OpenSSF Scorecard

PyPI

Latest release

1.10.1 · Sep 16, 2024

Releases this year

0

Significant stargazers

Nils

197 followers · starred Apr 2019

lhy1024

45 followers · starred Sep 2020

Pete Gadomski

354 followers · starred Jan 2023

Augustin Trancart

33 followers · starred May 2019

Toblerity/Fiona

Fiona reads and writes geographic data files

Python

1,249

1,548 commits

updated Oct 12, 2026

See the code

README

=====
Fiona
=====

.. image:: https://github.com/Toblerity/Fiona/actions/workflows/tests.yml/badge.svg
   :target: https://github.com/Toblerity/Fiona/actions/workflows/tests.yml
.. image:: https://github.com/Toblerity/Fiona/actions/workflows/test_gdal_latest.yml/badge.svg
   :target: https://github.com/Toblerity/Fiona/actions/workflows/test_gdal_latest.yml
.. image:: https://img.shields.io/pypi/v/fiona
   :target: https://pypi.org/project/fiona/
.. image:: https://api.securityscorecards.dev/projects/github.com/Toblerity/Fiona/badge
   :target: https://securityscorecards.dev/viewer/?uri=github.com/Toblerity/Fiona

Fiona streams simple feature data to and from GIS formats like GeoPackage and
Shapefile.

Fiona can read and write real-world data using multi-layered GIS formats,
zipped and in-memory virtual file systems, from files on your hard drive or in
cloud storage. This project includes Python modules and a command line
interface (CLI).

Fiona depends on `GDAL <https://gdal.org>`__ but is different from GDAL's own
`bindings <https://gdal.org/api/python_bindings.html>`__. Fiona is designed to
be highly productive and to make it easy to write code which is easy to read.

Installation
============

Fiona has several `extension modules
<https://docs.python.org/3/extending/extending.html>`__ which link against
libgdal. This complicates installation. Binary distributions (wheels)
containing libgdal and its own dependencies are available from the Python
Package Index and can be installed using pip.

.. code-block:: console

    pip install fiona

These wheels are mainly intended to make installation easy for simple
applications, not so much for production. They are not tested for compatibility
with all other binary wheels, conda packages, or QGIS, and omit many of GDAL's
optional format drivers. If you need, for example, GML support you will need to
build and install Fiona from a source distribution. It is possible to install
Fiona from source using pip (version >= 22.3) and the `--no-binary` option. A
specific GDAL installation can be selected by setting the GDAL_CONFIG
environment variable.

.. code-block:: console

    pip install -U pip
    pip install --no-binary fiona fiona

Many users find Anaconda and conda-forge a good way to install Fiona and get
access to more optional format drivers (like GML).

Fiona 1.10 requires Python 3.8 or higher and GDAL 3.4 or higher.

Python Usage
============

Features are read from and written to file-like ``Collection`` objects returned
from the ``fiona.open()`` function. Features are data classes modeled on the
GeoJSON format. They don't have any spatial methods of their own, so if you
want to transform them you will need Shapely or something like it. Here is an
example of using Fiona to read some features from one data file, change their
geometry attributes using Shapely, and write them to a new data file.

.. code-block:: python

    import fiona
    from fiona import Feature, Geometry
    from shapely.geometry import mapping, shape

    # Open a file for reading. We'll call this the source.
    with fiona.open(
        "zip+https://github.com/Toblerity/Fiona/files/11151652/coutwildrnp.zip"
    ) as src:

        # The file we'll write to must be initialized with a coordinate
        # system, a format driver name, and a record schema. We can get
        # initial values from the open source's profile property and then
        # modify them as we need.
        profile = src.profile
        profile["schema"]["geometry"] = "Point"
        profile["driver"] = "GPKG"

        # Open an output file, using the same format driver and coordinate
        # reference system as the source. The profile mapping fills in the
        # keyword parameters of fiona.open.
        with fiona.open("centroids.gpkg", "w", **profile) as dst:

            # Process only the feature records intersecting a box.
            for feat in src.filter(bbox=(-107.0, 37.0, -105.0, 39.0)):

                # Get the feature's centroid.
                centroid_shp = shape(feat.geometry).centroid
                new_geom = Geometry.from_dict(centroid_shp)

                # Write the feature out.
                dst.write(
                    Feature(geometry=new_geom, properties=f.properties)
                )

        # The destination's contents are flushed to disk and the file is
        # closed when its with block ends. This effectively
        # executes ``dst.flush(); dst.close()``.

CLI Usage
=========

Fiona's command line interface, named "fio", is documented at `docs/cli.rst
<https://github.com/Toblerity/Fiona/blob/main/docs/cli.rst>`__. The CLI has a
number of different commands. Its ``fio cat`` command streams GeoJSON features
from any dataset.

.. code-block:: console

    $ fio cat --compact tests/data/coutwildrnp.shp | jq -c '.'
    {"geometry":{"coordinates":[[[-111.73527526855469,41.995094299316406],...]]}}
    ...

Documentation
=============

For more details about this project, please see:

* Fiona `home page <https://github.com/Toblerity/Fiona>`__
* `Docs and manual <https://fiona.readthedocs.io/>`__
* `Examples <https://github.com/Toblerity/Fiona/tree/main/examples>`__
* Main `user discussion group <https://fiona.groups.io/g/main>`__
* `Developers discussion group <https://fiona.groups.io/g/dev>`__

Not written in Markdown, so it's shown here as plain text — view it formatted on GitHub.

cli
cython
gdal
gis
ogr
python
vector

Project health

Overall

5.8/10

Maintained

2/10

Code review

6/10

Contributors

10/10
OpenSSF Scorecard

PyPI

Latest release

1.10.1 · Sep 16, 2024

Releases this year

0

Significant stargazers

Nils

197 followers · starred Apr 2019

lhy1024

45 followers · starred Sep 2020

Pete Gadomski

354 followers · starred Jan 2023

Augustin Trancart

33 followers · starred May 2019