owslib

What it is and what it does

OWSLib is a client library for interacting with Open Geospatial Consortium web services. It abstracts the complexity of OGC service standards (WMS, WFS, WCS, CSW, WPS, WMTS) behind a common Python API, letting you query service capabilities, retrieve metadata, and fetch geospatial data without building raw HTTP requests or parsing XML directly.

The library depends on lxml for XML parsing, requests for HTTP communication, python-dateutil for timestamp handling, and pyyaml for configuration. It's maintained actively and supports current Python versions (3.12+). Some service implementations are noted as beta quality, so production use of WCS, WPS, or WMTS should be validated against your specific service provider.

Use it for:

• Query WMS layer metadata and download map tiles from web map services.
• Retrieve feature data from WFS servers and inspect available feature types.
• Access and parse OGC service capabilities documents to discover available operations and formats.
• Build geospatial data pipelines that consume multiple OGC web services.
• Integrate OGC-compliant geospatial data sources into Python GIS workflows.

Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying

OWSLib provides Python client access to Open Geospatial Consortium web services (WMS, WFS, WCS, CSW, WPS, WMTS) for querying service metadata and retrieving geospatial data.

Yes. OWSLib is actively maintained, has no known vulnerabilities, low install friction, and a permissive license. It fills a specific niche—standardized OGC web service access—that few other Python packages address comprehensively. Install it if you need to consume WMS, WFS, or other OGC services; be aware that WCS, WPS, and WMTS are still beta.

Install

owslib on PyPI

pip install owslib

uv add owslib

poetry add owslib

Installing owslib

Before you install

Installation is straightforward with low friction; the package has four common runtime dependencies (lxml, python-dateutil, pyyaml, requests) that install cleanly. Maintenance is active with a recent release 71 days ago and regular commits.

License in practice

BSD-3-Clause is permissive, allowing commercial and private use with minimal restrictions beyond attribution and liability disclaimers.

Quickstart

pip install OWSLib

from owslib.wms import WebMapService
wms = WebMapService('http://wms.jpl.nasa.gov/wms.cgi', version='1.1.1')
print(wms.identification.title)

Requires Python 3.12 or later.

Verify before relying

• Current stability and production-readiness of WCS, WPS, and WMTS implementations (marked as beta in description).
• Performance characteristics when querying large or complex OGC service catalogs.

Package facts

Evidence: owslib-0.36.0-py3-none-any.whl

Keywords: gis, ogc, ogcapi, ows, opensearch, iso, 19115, fgdc, dif, ows, wfs, wms, sos, csw, wps, wcs, capabilities, metadata, wmts, connectedsystems

Tags

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