[gdal-dev] generate shapefile from program

[Wendell Turner]

On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 01:09:45PM +1000, joe at omc-international.com.au wrote:
> > Can someone point me to a python program that will generate
> > a shapefile from scratch?
> >
> > Given an extent, projection, and set of lat/lng to place
> > some markers or images, I would like a python (or c or c++)
> > program to generate a shapefile for an overlay with
> > mapserver/openlayers.  I think ogr may be able to do this,
> > and saw many examples of how to change existing shapefiles,
> > but not to generate one from scratch.
> 
> I found this page from Sean Gillies blog to be very helpful:
> 
> http://sgillies.net/blog/16/graticule-hacking-with-ogr/
> 
> but you will need to play around a bit to modify it to handle points.

Thank you, but something is not right yet.

I was able to compile mapserver and the python libraries so
that the graticule program runs & produces nice png images.

However, mapserv doesn't like the .shp and complains about
 msDBFgetItemIndex(): DBASE file error. Item 'location' not found.

What is mapserver complaining about in the .shp file, and
where is it looking for the location item?  How do i add
that to the .shp file?

Thanks,

Wendell