GDAL/OGR cheat sheet

Cheat sheet for the GDAL/OGR command-line geodata tools. It was originally kept on GitHub as a fork of a previous release.

• Vector operations: inspect, convert, clip, reproject, dissolve, join and load vector data with ogrinfo and ogr2ogr.
• Raster operations: inspect, convert, reproject, clip, merge and analyse rasters with gdalinfo, gdal_translate, gdalwarp, gdaldem and friends.
• Other recipes: KML and CSV conversions, MODIS, shell helper functions and bounding boxes.

Sources

Most recipes come from these pages, to which thanks are due:

• http://live.osgeo.org/en/quickstart/gdal_quickstart.html
• https://github.com/nvkelso/geo-how-to/wiki/OGR-to-reproject,-modify-Shapefiles
• ftp://ftp.remotesensing.org/gdal/presentations/OpenSource_Weds_Andre_CUGOS.pdf
• http://developmentseed.org/blog/2009/jul/30/using-open-source-tools-make-elevation-maps-afghanistan-and-pakistan/
• http://linfiniti.com/2010/12/a-workflow-for-creating-beautiful-relief-shaded-dems-using-gdal/
• http://linfiniti.com/2009/09/clipping-rasters-with-gdal-using-polygons/
• http://nautilus.baruch.sc.edu/twiki_dmcc/bin/view/Main/OGR_example
• http://www.gdal.org/frmt_hdf4.html
• http://planetflux.adamwilson.us/2010/06/modis-processing-with-r-gdal-and-nco.html
• http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/FAQRaster
• http://www.mikejcorey.com/wordpress/2011/02/05/tutorial-create-beautiful-hillshade-maps-from-digital-elevation-models-with-gdal-and-mapnik/
• http://dirkraffel.com/2011/07/05/best-way-to-merge-color-relief-with-shaded-relief-map/
• http://gfoss.blogspot.com/2008/06/gdal-raster-data-tips-and-tricks.html
• http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/gdal-dev-Dissolve-shapefile-using-GDAL-OGR-td5036930.html
• https://www.mapbox.com/tilemill/docs/guides/terrain-data/
• https://gist.github.com/ashaw/0862ec044c45b9aa3c76
• https://github.com/gina-alaska/dans-gdal-scripts

Links to this page: GDAL/OGR: other recipes, GDAL/OGR: raster operations, GDAL/OGR: vector operations

Last edited Thu 15 October 2026