How to read a shapefile in Python?

1. read your shapefile with Fiona, PyShp, ogr or ...using the geo_interface protocol (GeoJSON):

with Fiona

import fiona
shape = fiona.open("my_shapefile.shp")
print shape.schema
{'geometry': 'LineString', 'properties': OrderedDict([(u'FID', 'float:11')])}
#first feature of the shapefile
first = shape.next()
print first # (GeoJSON format)
{'geometry': {'type': 'LineString', 'coordinates': [(0.0, 0.0), (25.0, 10.0), (50.0, 50.0)]}, 'type': 'Feature', 'id': '0', 'properties': OrderedDict([(u'FID', 0.0)])}

with PyShp

import shapefile
shape = shapefile.Reader("my_shapefile.shp")
#first feature of the shapefile
feature = shape.shapeRecords()[0]
first = feature.shape.__geo_interface__  
print first # (GeoJSON format)
{'type': 'LineString', 'coordinates': ((0.0, 0.0), (25.0, 10.0), (50.0, 50.0))}

with ogr:

from osgeo import ogr
file = ogr.Open("my_shapefile.shp")
shape = file.GetLayer(0)
#first feature of the shapefile
feature = shape.GetFeature(0)
first = feature.ExportToJson()
print first # (GeoJSON format)
{"geometry": {"type": "LineString", "coordinates": [[0.0, 0.0], [25.0, 10.0], [50.0, 50.0]]}, "type": "Feature", "properties": {"FID": 0.0}, "id": 0}

2. conversion to Shapely geometry (with the shape function)

from shapely.geometry import shape
shp_geom = shape(first['geometry']) # or shp_geom = shape(first) with PyShp)
print shp_geom
LINESTRING (0 0, 25 10, 50 50)
print type(shp_geom)
<class 'shapely.geometry.linestring.LineString'>

3. computations

4. save the resulting shapefile

• How to write Shapely geometries to shapefiles?
• better way to duplicate a layer using ogr in python?
• Using Fiona to write a new shapefile from scratch
• etc.

I find geopandas as the best performer here. Code:

import geopandas as gpd
shapefile = gpd.read_file("shapefile.shp")
print(shapefile)