shapefile - Selecting features by attributes using ogr2ogr?

I am writing a shapefile after some processing; however, in the final step I need to do some selection by attributes from the the shapefile.

I am using the command in a shell with the aim of using it in a Python script when it works.

ogr2ogr -f "ESRI Shapefile" -select * where ID="1" outfile.shp infile.shp

I am getting the error message:

FAILURE: 

Unable to open datasource `Downloads' with the following drivers.

What could I be doing wrong?

Answer

You miss a minus sign before where and the select is not necessary, so it should be:

ogr2ogr -where ID="1" outfile.shp infile.shp

or if you have to do more complex query on your input data:

ogr2ogr -sql "SELECT * FROM infile WHERE ID='1'" outfile.shp infile.shp

If ID is a field of Integer type, substitute ID='1' with ID=1.

Notes:

1. -f "ESRI Shapefile" is not necessary because "ESRI Shapefile" is the ogr2ogr default output format;


2. it's convenient to skip -select and use directly the -where clause when you want to select all the fields.