Geometry File IO

When reading a search geometry from file, the default file parsers should be sufficient for most use cases. However, if your geometry file contains multiple data layers or non-standard encodings, then you can use additional options to help parse the file.

Supported Formats

The pwfdf-api supports the following vector feature file formats for geometry queries:

Format	Description	Extensions
CSV	Comma Separated Value	.csv
DGN	Microstation DGN	.dgn
DXF	AutoCAD DXF	.dxf
FlatGeobuf	FlatGeobuf	.fgb
GML	Geography Markup Language	.gml, .xml
GPKG	GeoPackage vector	.gpkg
GPX	GPS Exchange Format	.gpx
GeoJSON	GeoJSON	.json, .geojson
GeoJSONSeq	Sequence of GeoJSON features	.geojsons, .geojsonl
MapInfo File	MapInfo TAB and MIF/MID	.tab, .mid, .mif
OGR_GMT	GMT ASCII Vectors	.gmt
OpenFileGDB	ESRI File Geodatabase Vector	.gdb
Shapefile	ESRI Shapefile / DBF	.shp, .dbf, .shz, .shp.zip
SQLite	SQLite / Spatialite RDBMS	.sqlite, .db

Note

The values in the first column are the supported values of the geometry driver option.

Format Driver

By default, pwfdf-api will use the geometry file extension to determine the format driver used to read the file. Refer to the geometry format table for the formats inferred by various extensions.

Command Line

If your file uses a non-standard file extension, then use the --geometry-driver option to specify the file format. For example:

pwfdf assessments --geometry my-file.unusual --geometry-driver Shapefile

The supported format selectors are the values in the first column of the geometry format table.

Python

If your file uses a non-standard file extension, then use the geometry_driver input to specify the file format. For example:

assessments(geometry="my-file.unusual", geometry_driver="Shapefile")

The supported format selectors are the values in the first column of the geometry format table.

Multiple Layers

Command Line

Some GIS formats can hold multiple data layers. For example, File Geodatabases and GeoJSON Feature Collections. If your geometry file contains multiple layers, then by default, the command will parse the first layer as the geometry. Use the --geometry-layer or --geometry-index option to select a different layer as the geometry.

Use --geometry-layer to reference a layer by name:

pwfdf assessments --geometry my-data.gdb --geometry-layer MyLayerName

Or --geometry-index to reference a layer by index:

pwfdf assessments --geometry my-data.gdb --geometry-index 2

Note that layer indices use 0-indexing, so the first layer has an index of 0, second layer has an index of 1, etc.

Python

Some GIS formats can hold multiple data layers. For example, File Geodatabases and GeoJSON Feature Collections. If your geometry file contains multiple layers, then by default, the command will parse the first layer as the geometry. Use the geometry_layer input to select a different layer as the geometry.

Set geometry_layer equal to a string to reference a layer by name:

assessments(geometry="my-data.gdb", geometry_layer="MyLayerName")

Or set the input to an integer to reference a layer by index:

assessments(geometry="my-data.gdb", geometry_layer=2)

Note that layer indices use 0-indexing, as per standard Python conventions.

Encoding

Command Line

If the format driver fails to detect the encoding of your data, you can use the --geometry-encoding option to specify the encoding explicitly. For example:

pwfdf assessments --geometry my-file.shp --geometry-encoding Windows-1252

Python

If the format driver fails to detect the encoding of your data, you can use the geometry_encoding option to specify the encoding explicitly. For example:

assessments(geometry="my-file.shp", geometry_encoding="Windows-1252")