Toolbox: Pandas DataFrame into GeoPandas GeoDataFrame

Have you ever had problems visualizing spatial data read from a csv file? Is your spatial data stored in flat tables with lon / lat columns? I encountered those problems, that’s why I use a simple to transform quickly transform DataFrame into GeoDataFrame:

import geopandas as gpd


def df2gdf(df, lon_col='x', lat_col='y', epsg=4326, crs=None):
    """
    Function transforms DataFrame into GeoDataFrame.
    
    Parameters
    ----------
    df : pandas DataFrame
    
    lon_col : str, default = 'x'
        Longitude column name.
        
    lat_col : str, default = 'y'
        Latitude column name.
        
    epsg : Union[int, str], default = 4326
        EPSG number of projection.
        
    crs : str, default = None
        Coordinate Reference System of data.
        
    Returns
    -------
    gdf : GeoPandas GeoDataFrame
        GeoDataFrame with set geometry column ('geometry'), CRS, and all columns from the passed DataFrame.
    
    """
    
    gdf = gpd.GeoDataFrame(df)
    gdf['geometry'] = gpd.points_from_xy(x=df[lon_col], y=df[lat_col])
    gdf.geometry = gdf['geometry']
    
    if crs is None:
        gdf.set_crs(epsg=epsg, inplace=True)
    else:
        gdf.set_crs(crs=crs, inplace=True)
        
    return gdf

The basic differences between DataFrame and GeoDataFrame are:

• column with the geometry data types,
• projection (coordinate reference system).

The function df2gdf() takes DataFrame, longitude column, latitude column, and crs or epsg to set a valid projection of the output structure. If you have provided DataFrame with a column that stores geometries (Point, Line, Polygon) then, the line gdf['geometry'] = gpd.points_from_xy(x=df[lon_col], y=df[lat_col]) is not required here. However, I assume that when we read a plain table, then geometries are provided as x and y columns, or lon and lat columns. In this scenario, we must transform a tuple of floats.