OGRTINDEX(1)

✨ NAME ✨

ogrtindex — she creates a tileindex, bestie 💅

This is the ogrtindex(1) page from the GDAL manual, and we're gonna get you fully caught up. No cap.

---

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

Usage: ogrtindex [--help] [--long-usage] [--help-general]
                 [-lnum <n>]... [-lname <name>]... [-of <output_format>]
                 [-tileindex <tileindex>] [-write_absolute_path]
                 [-skip_different_projection] [-t_srs <srs_def>]
                 [-src_srs_name <field_name>]
                 [-src_srs_format {AUTO|WKT|EPSG|PROJ}]
                 [-accept_different_schemas]
                 <output_dataset> <src_dataset>...

---

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Okay so ogrtindex is that girl fr — she makes a tileindex, which is literally just a file holding a list of the identities of a bunch of other files, plus their spatial extents. Iconic. 🗺️✨

Her main character purpose? Being used with MapServer for tiled access to layers through the OGR connection type. Periodt.

💡 TIP: There's an equivalent in the new gdal command line interface — go look at gdal vector index. Slay.

---

✨ OPTIONS ✨

• --help — shows you this help message and dips out. Bye! 👋
• --help-general — gives you the brief usage message for the generic GDAL commandline options and exits.
• -lnum <n> — adds layer number n from every source file into the tile index. (You can pass this more than once, note the ... in the synopsis 👀)
• -lname <name> — adds the layer named name from every source file into the tile index. Also stackable ✨
• -f <output_format> — picks your output format name. If you say nothing, default is to make a shapefile. 🎀
• -tileindex <field_name> — the name to use for the dataset name. Defaults to LOCATION.
• -write_absolute_path — filenames get written with absolute paths. No relativeness here, she's being direct 💅
• -skip_different_projection — only layers whose projection ref matches the layers already inserted in the tileindex will get inserted. Projection mismatch? Not today. 🚫
• -t_srs <target_srs> — the extents of input files get transformed into the target coordinate reference system you want. Heads up though: using this option generates files that are not compatible with MapServer < 7.2 😭 The default instead makes simple rectangular polygons in the same coordinate reference system as the input vector layers.
• -src_srs_name <field_name> — the name of the field that stores the SRS of each tile. You can use this field name as the value of the TILESRS keyword in MapServer >= 7.2. Cute and functional ✨
• -src_srs_format {AUTO|WKT|EPSG|PROJ} — the format the SRS of each tile must be written in. The available formats are: AUTO, WKT, EPSG, PROJ.
• -accept_different_schemas — by default ogrtindex checks that all the layers inserted into the index have the same attribute schemas. Specify this and that test gets disabled. But be aware, bestie: the resulting index may be incompatible with MapServer! 💀

---

If you don't pass any -lnum or -lname arguments, it's assumed that all layers in the source datasets should be added to the tile index as independent records. Every single one, go off 👑

And if the tile index already exists? She appends to it. If it doesn't? She creates it. Simple as that 🫶

---

💖 RETURN STATUS CODE 💖

• Returns status code 0 when it's a success story 🎉
• Returns non-zero when there's an error. (Quick note: non-blocking errors that get emitted as warnings still count as a successful execution, so don't panic 🌈)

---

🎀 EXAMPLES 🎀

Example 1

This one creates a shapefile (tindex.shp) holding a tile index of the BL2000_LINK layers in all the NTF files inside the wrk directory:

ogrtindex tindex.shp wrk/*.NTF

Ate. No crumbs. 🔥

---

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Frank Warmerdam <warmerdam@pobox.com>, Silke Reimer <silke@intevation.de>

---

💜 COPYRIGHT 💜

1998-2026

---

And that's the whole page, bestie 🧚 It's from GDAL, dated Aug 18, 2026 — OGRTINDEX(1), iykyk. Go index some tiles and be the main character of your own geospatial pipeline. Byeeee 💅✨🦋

periodt.