PrintQGIS has a Python programming interface that allows for extending its functionality and for writing scripts that automate QGIS based workflows either inside QGIS or as standalone applications. The Python package that provides this interface is simply called qgis but often referred to as pyQGIS. Its functionality overlaps with what is available in packages that you already know such as arcpy, GDAL/ORG, and the Esri Python API. In the following, we provide a brief introduction to the API so that you are able to perform standard operations like loading and writing vector data, manipulating features and their attributes, and performing selection and geoprocessing operations.