Failed to find template header file header.dxf for reading

[michkowalczuk]

Expected behavior and actual behavior.

Can not write a DXF file because of the following error:

[Wed Nov 22 19:13:20 2023].0540, 41.9040: GDAL: GDALDriver::Create(DXF,D:\GisData\geoportal\BDOT10k\warszawa\out\bridge.dxf,0,0,0,Unknown,0000000000000000)
[Wed Nov 22 19:13:20 2023].0550, 41.9050: CPLError: Failed to find template header file header.dxf for reading,
is GDAL_DATA set properly?
ERROR 4: Failed to find template header file header.dxf for reading,
is GDAL_DATA set properly?

Steps to reproduce the problem.

• I use CPLSetConfigOption to pass 'GDAL_DATA' config option and set path to share\gdal folder. This folder definitely contains header.dxf file.

• Then I check the config option using GetEnvironmentVariable('GDAL_DATA'). Method returns me the same path I passed before.

• GDALCreate returns NULL and returns the above error.

Furthermore, I programmatically set environmental variable using SetEnvironmentVariable from WIN API with no effect.

EDIT: I must add that using the same method I add PROJ_DATA and GDAL finds proj.db.

Operating system

Windows 11 x64

GDAL version and provenance

GDAL 3.7.2 C API

[rouault]

I suspect a usage issue. Are there non-ASCII characters in the value of GDAL_DATA? If so, you need to UTF-8 encode the string

[michkowalczuk]

I suspect a usage issue. Are there non-ASCII characters in the value of GDAL_DATA? If so, you need to UTF-8 encode the string

The actual string is "D:\Projects\geopackage\sp-geopackage-import\bin\share\gdal", so that's not the problem.

[jratike80]

Can you write dxf with GDAL binaries? ogr2ogr -f dxf test.dxf test.json That works for me and my gdal_data seems to be GDAL_DATA=C:\OSGeo4W\apps\gdal\share\gdal Might be good to test if the issue affects also the binaries or just the code.

[michkowalczuk]

Can you write dxf with GDAL binaries? ogr2ogr -f dxf test.dxf test.json That works for me and my gdal_data seems to be GDAL_DATA=C:\OSGeo4W\apps\gdal\share\gdal Might be good to test if the issue affects also the binaries or just the code.

I use Conda distribution (not OSGeo4W) and using ogr2ogr by default get the same error. If I set GDAL_DATA environment variable in windows it fails with different error:

ERROR 1: DXF layer does not support arbitrary field creation, field 'EntityHand' not created.

This means that GDALCreate passes. (I use the same path as I try in the code.)

It also means that setting env variable manually is a solution for ogr2ogr but not dor using dlls.

[jratike80]

How about backslashes, what if they are considered to mean escapes? Have you tried with forward ones, or with double \\?

[michkowalczuk]

How about backslashes, what if they are considered to mean escapes? Have you tried with forward ones, or with double \\?

Tested all possible combinations. As I mentioned at the beginning, GDAL can recognize PROJ_DATA path, but GDAL_DATAno in my case.

[jratike80]

I would double check that PROJ_DATA works even if it is in D:\Projects\geopackage\sp-geopackage-import\bin\share\proj. Or maybe it is already, I just don't know.

[michkowalczuk]

I would double check that PROJ_DATA works even if it is in D:\Projects\geopackage\sp-geopackage-import\bin\share\proj. Or maybe it is already, I just don't know.

Yes, it is. I have 2 separate folders ...\share\proj (PROJ_DATA) and ...\share\gdal (GDAL_DATA).

[michkowalczuk]

Dose somebody know why GDAL uses "gdal" argument in CPLFindFile function, not "gdal_data" when looking for "header.dxf"? Maybe this is some clue?

[rouault]

Dose somebody know why GDAL uses "gdal" argument in CPLFindFile function,

No, this is normal. Cf https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/blob/0fe09b61d751916623e53252e51047ec40853814/port/cpl_findfile.cpp#L166

Something's wrong in your setup, but I'm not sure what

[michkowalczuk]

Dose somebody know why GDAL uses "gdal" argument in CPLFindFile function,

No, this is normal. Cf

https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/blob/0fe09b61d751916623e53252e51047ec40853814/port/cpl_findfile.cpp#L166

Something's wrong in your setup, but I'm not sure what

Yes, it looks strange. Notice that I did not get "Cannot find %s (GDAL_DATA is not defined)" error from 169 line. It means that CPLGetConfigOption("GDAL_DATA", nullptr)) returns something (True), so GDAL_DATA is probably set correctly...

[michkowalczuk]

I found it! The problem is on the string conversion side. I'm working on Delphi wrapper for GDAL and convert Delphi string to C char*.

So far the conversion below has worked: Result := PUTF8Char(AnsiString(aStr));

After changing the conversion function to use UTF8String instead of AnsiString, it started working. :-) Result := PUTF8Char(UTF8String(aStr));