gdal - For looping folder to batch clip rasters by polygon using python and QGIS?

I am using python and QGIS 2.0. I am trying to clip rasters in a folder by one polygon feature. It's the first time for me using (let's say) "PyQGIS", I was used to arcpy before. Anyway, I don't get my simple script to work, any suggestion would be very appreciated!

import qgis.core, qgis,utils
QgsApplication.setPrefixPath("C:/OSGeo4W64/apps/qgis", True)
QgsApplication.initQgis()

CLIP= "C:/Users/unim/Documents/Umberto/Universita/PhD/Guglielmin/Permafrost/Alta_Valtellina/Landsat_ita/study_area_foscagno.shp"

INPUT_FOLDER="C:/Users/unimi/Documents/Umberto/Universita/PhD/Guglielmin/Permafrost/Alta_Valtellina/Landsat_ita/LE71930282000259EDC00"
OUTPUT= "C:/Users/unim/Documents/Umberto/Universita/PhD/Guglielmin/Permafrost/Alta_Valtellina/Landsat_ita/foscagno_pyqgis/"


for RASTER in INPUT_FOLDER.tif
do
    echo "Processing $RASTER"
    gdalwarp -q -cutline CLIP -crop_to_cutline -of GTiff RASTER OUTPUT+ "clip_"+ RASTER
done


QgsApplication.exitQgis()

Below are the improvements I've done since now, not getting the script to work though, but I think I might be getting closer...

import qgis.core, qgis.utils, os, fnmatch
from osgeo import gdal

CLIP= "C:/Users/unimi/Documents/Umberto/Universita/PhD/Guglielmin/Permafrost/Alta_Valtellina/Landsat_ita/study_area_foscagno.shp"
INPUT_FOLDER= "C:/Users/unimi/Documents/Umberto/Universita/PhD/Guglielmin/Permafrost/Alta_Valtellina/Landsat_ita/LE71930282000259EDC00/DNs2Reflectance_LE71930282000259EDC00"
OUTPUT= "C:/Users/unimi/Documents/Umberto/Universita/PhD/Guglielmin/Permafrost/Alta_Valtellina/Landsat_ita/Cloud_mask_AltaValtellina/clip_2_foscagno"


def findRasters (path, filter):
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(path):
        for file in fnmatch.filter(files, filter):
            yield os.path.join (root, file)

for raster in findRasters (INPUT_FOLDER, '*.tif'):
    print (raster)
    outRaster = OUTPUT + '/clip_' + raster
    cmd = 'gdalwarp -dstnodata 0 -q -cutline CLIP -crop_to_cutline %s %s' % (raster, outRaster)
    os.system (cmd)

I think there might be something wrong in the "gdal" command, as the "print" function does its job properely, but no file is written to the output, neither I receive any error. By the way, it's been hard to fond an easy documentation on gdal coding...

Answer

I finally managed with this very simple and clean script, which calls GDAL from Python without importing it (as suggested, but using "Call ()" method instead of "os.system ()". I hope this could help!

import os, fnmatch
from subprocess import call
call(["ls", "-l"])

inFolder= 'C:/Users/unimi/Documents/Umberto/Universita/PhD/Guglielmin/Permafrost/Alta_Valtellina/Landsat_ita/LE71930282000259EDC00/DNs2Reflectance_LE71930282000259EDC00/'
outFolder= 'C:/Users/unimi/Documents/Umberto/Universita/PhD/Guglielmin/Permafrost/Alta_Valtellina/Landsat_ita/Cloud_mask_AltaValtellina/clip_2_foscagno/'


os.chdir (inFolder)

def findRasters (path, filter):
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(path, filter):
        for file in fnmatch.filter(files, filter):
            yield os.path.join (root, file)

for raster in findRasters (inFolder, '*.tif'):
    (infilepath, infilename)= os.path.split (raster)

    print infilename
    outRaster= outFolder+ 'clip_'+ infilename
    print outRaster
    warp= 'gdalwarp -dstnodata 0 -q -cutline %s -crop_to_cutline -of GTiff %s %s' % ('study_area_foscagno.shp', raster, outRaster)
    call (warp)