A common way to deal with spatial data in R is the sf package, which is built on the concept of simple features. According to the the sf package vignette, simple features are “…a formal standard (ISO 19125-1:2004) that describes how objects in the real world can be represented in computers, with emphasis on the spatial geometry of these objects. It also describes how such objects can be stored in and retrieved from databases, and which geometrical operations should be defined for them.”
The most common geometry types of simple features are: POINT, LINESTRING, POLYGON, MULTIPOINT, MULTILINESTRING, MULTIPOLYGON. All geometry types are based on POINTs. This package supports the encoding and decoding of the geometry types POINT, LINESTRING and POLYGON.
There are four possible dimension combinations of geometries in the
sf package. In the flexpolyine package the first three
dimension combinations are supported and represented as follows:
If no value for third_dim is provided in
encode_sf(), the dimensions of the sf geometry are
considered. In case of "XYZ" the third dimension is set to
"ELEVATION" and thereby recognized again as
"XYZ" by decode_sf() during decoding:
library(flexpolyline)
library(sf)
#> Linking to GEOS 3.12.1, GDAL 3.8.4, PROJ 9.4.0; sf_use_s2() is TRUE
coords <- matrix(
c(
8.69821, 50.10228, 10.11111,
8.69567, 50.10201, 20.22222,
8.69150, 50.10063, 30.33333,
8.68752, 50.09878, 40.44444
),
ncol = 3, byrow = TRUE
)
(sfg_z <- st_linestring(coords, dim = "XYZ"))
#> LINESTRING Z (8.69821 50.10228 10.11111, 8.69567 50.10201 20.22222, 8.6915 50.10063 30.33333, 8.68752 50.09878 40.44444)
(sfg_enc_z <- encode_sf(sfg_z))
#> [1] "B1Voz5xJ67i1Bu629B1B7Pu629BzIhau629BxL7Yu629B"
decode_sf(sfg_enc_z)
#> Simple feature collection with 1 feature and 2 fields
#> Geometry type: LINESTRING
#> Dimension: XYZ
#> Bounding box: xmin: 8.68752 ymin: 50.09878 xmax: 8.69821 ymax: 50.10228
#> z_range: zmin: 10.11111 zmax: 40.44444
#> CRS: NA
#> id dim3 geometry
#> 1 1 ELEVATION LINESTRING Z (8.69821 50.10...In case of "XYM" the third dimension is set to
"CUSTOM1" and again set to "XYM" in
decoding:
(sfg_m <- st_linestring(coords, dim = "XYM"))
#> LINESTRING M (8.69821 50.10228 10.11111, 8.69567 50.10201 20.22222, 8.6915 50.10063 30.33333, 8.68752 50.09878 40.44444)
(sfg_enc_m <- encode_sf(sfg_m))
#> [1] "BlXoz5xJ67i1Bu629B1B7Pu629BzIhau629BxL7Yu629B"
decode_sf(sfg_enc_m)
#> Simple feature collection with 1 feature and 2 fields
#> Geometry type: LINESTRING
#> Dimension: XYM
#> Bounding box: xmin: 8.68752 ymin: 50.09878 xmax: 8.69821 ymax: 50.10228
#> m_range: mmin: 10.11111 mmax: 40.44444
#> CRS: NA
#> id dim3 geometry
#> 1 1 CUSTOM1 LINESTRING M (8.69821 50.10...The geometry column in simple feature data sets is called simple
feature geometry list-column. The sfc object has a Coordinate Reference
System (CRS) assigned. In the case of longitude and latitude data this
is most often WGS84 (EPSG: 4326). Objects of type sfc are
supported as input in encoding:
(sfc <- st_as_sfc(
lapply(seq(1, 5), function(x) {
st_linestring(coords[, 1:2] + runif(1, -1, 1), dim = "XY")
}),
crs = 4326
))
#> Geometry set for 5 features
#> Geometry type: LINESTRING
#> Dimension: XY
#> Bounding box: xmin: 8.093094 ymin: 49.50435 xmax: 9.429341 ymax: 50.83341
#> Geodetic CRS: WGS 84
#> LINESTRING (9.081015 50.48509, 9.078475 50.4848...
#> LINESTRING (8.868725 50.2728, 8.866185 50.27253...
#> LINESTRING (9.429341 50.83341, 9.426801 50.8331...
#> LINESTRING (9.289513 50.69358, 9.286973 50.6933...
#> LINESTRING (8.103784 49.50785, 8.101244 49.5075...
(sfc_enc <- encode_sf(sfc))
#> [1] "BF6rk0Js0t3B1B7PzIhaxL7Y" "BFg96yJylk2B1B7PzIhaxL7Y"
#> [3] "BF6so2Js1x5B1B7PzIhaxL7Y" "BF8it1Jur24B1B7PzIhaxL7Y"
#> [5] "BFiwluJ04uxB1B7PzIhaxL7Y"
decode_sf(sfc_enc, crs = 4326)
#> Simple feature collection with 5 features and 2 fields
#> Geometry type: LINESTRING
#> Dimension: XY
#> Bounding box: xmin: 8.09309 ymin: 49.50435 xmax: 9.42934 ymax: 50.83341
#> Geodetic CRS: WGS 84
#> id dim3 geometry
#> 1 1 ABSENT LINESTRING (9.08102 50.4850...
#> 2 2 ABSENT LINESTRING (8.86873 50.2728...
#> 3 3 ABSENT LINESTRING (9.42934 50.8334...
#> 4 4 ABSENT LINESTRING (9.28951 50.6935...
#> 5 5 ABSENT LINESTRING (8.10378 49.5078...A simple feature is a geometry that is connected with further
characteristics (other than it’s coordinates), which in practice means a
data.frame (also data.table or
tibble) with an sfc column. The
flexpolyline package only takes care of the coordinates
of the LINESTRINGs in the sf object, other columns and the CRS
information are not encoded and stored in the string:
(sf <- st_as_sf(
data.frame(
name = c("A", "B", "C", "D", "E"),
color = sample(c("red", "green", "blue"), 5, replace = TRUE),
geometry = sfc
)
))
#> Simple feature collection with 5 features and 2 fields
#> Geometry type: LINESTRING
#> Dimension: XY
#> Bounding box: xmin: 8.093094 ymin: 49.50435 xmax: 9.429341 ymax: 50.83341
#> Geodetic CRS: WGS 84
#> name color geometry
#> 1 A red LINESTRING (9.081015 50.485...
#> 2 B blue LINESTRING (8.868725 50.272...
#> 3 C green LINESTRING (9.429341 50.833...
#> 4 D green LINESTRING (9.289513 50.693...
#> 5 E blue LINESTRING (8.103784 49.507...
(sf_enc <- encode_sf(sf))
#> [1] "BF6rk0Js0t3B1B7PzIhaxL7Y" "BFg96yJylk2B1B7PzIhaxL7Y"
#> [3] "BF6so2Js1x5B1B7PzIhaxL7Y" "BF8it1Jur24B1B7PzIhaxL7Y"
#> [5] "BFiwluJ04uxB1B7PzIhaxL7Y"
decode_sf(sf_enc, crs = 4326)
#> Simple feature collection with 5 features and 2 fields
#> Geometry type: LINESTRING
#> Dimension: XY
#> Bounding box: xmin: 8.09309 ymin: 49.50435 xmax: 9.42934 ymax: 50.83341
#> Geodetic CRS: WGS 84
#> id dim3 geometry
#> 1 1 ABSENT LINESTRING (9.08102 50.4850...
#> 2 2 ABSENT LINESTRING (8.86873 50.2728...
#> 3 3 ABSENT LINESTRING (9.42934 50.8334...
#> 4 4 ABSENT LINESTRING (9.28951 50.6935...
#> 5 5 ABSENT LINESTRING (8.10378 49.5078...Note: The columns "name" and
"color" were not encoded and are missing after decoding.
The CRS has to be provided in the decoding by the crs
argument. Otherwise it is set to sf::NA_crs_.