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: 7.854541 ymin: 49.2658 xmax: 9.554905 ymax: 50.95897
#> Geodetic CRS: WGS 84
#> LINESTRING (9.554905 50.95897, 9.552365 50.9587...
#> LINESTRING (8.99233 50.3964, 8.98979 50.39613, ...
#> LINESTRING (9.098744 50.50281, 9.096204 50.5025...
#> LINESTRING (7.865231 49.2693, 7.862691 49.26903...
#> LINESTRING (9.061169 50.46524, 9.058629 50.4649...
(sfc_enc <- encode_sf(sfc))
#> [1] "BFy9g3Jkmq6B1B7PzIhaxL7Y" "BFwhzzJiq82B1B7PzIhaxL7Y"
#> [3] "BFy6n0Jkjx3B1B7PzIhaxL7Y" "BFk92sJ2lgwB1B7PzIhaxL7Y"
#> [5] "BF4vg0Jq4p3B1B7PzIhaxL7Y"
decode_sf(sfc_enc, crs = 4326)
#> Simple feature collection with 5 features and 2 fields
#> Geometry type: LINESTRING
#> Dimension: XY
#> Bounding box: xmin: 7.85454 ymin: 49.2658 xmax: 9.5549 ymax: 50.95897
#> Geodetic CRS: WGS 84
#> id dim3 geometry
#> 1 1 ABSENT LINESTRING (9.5549 50.95897...
#> 2 2 ABSENT LINESTRING (8.99233 50.3964...
#> 3 3 ABSENT LINESTRING (9.09874 50.5028...
#> 4 4 ABSENT LINESTRING (7.86523 49.2693...
#> 5 5 ABSENT LINESTRING (9.06117 50.4652...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: 7.854541 ymin: 49.2658 xmax: 9.554905 ymax: 50.95897
#> Geodetic CRS: WGS 84
#> name color geometry
#> 1 A blue LINESTRING (9.554905 50.958...
#> 2 B blue LINESTRING (8.99233 50.3964...
#> 3 C green LINESTRING (9.098744 50.502...
#> 4 D red LINESTRING (7.865231 49.269...
#> 5 E green LINESTRING (9.061169 50.465...
(sf_enc <- encode_sf(sf))
#> [1] "BFy9g3Jkmq6B1B7PzIhaxL7Y" "BFwhzzJiq82B1B7PzIhaxL7Y"
#> [3] "BFy6n0Jkjx3B1B7PzIhaxL7Y" "BFk92sJ2lgwB1B7PzIhaxL7Y"
#> [5] "BF4vg0Jq4p3B1B7PzIhaxL7Y"
decode_sf(sf_enc, crs = 4326)
#> Simple feature collection with 5 features and 2 fields
#> Geometry type: LINESTRING
#> Dimension: XY
#> Bounding box: xmin: 7.85454 ymin: 49.2658 xmax: 9.5549 ymax: 50.95897
#> Geodetic CRS: WGS 84
#> id dim3 geometry
#> 1 1 ABSENT LINESTRING (9.5549 50.95897...
#> 2 2 ABSENT LINESTRING (8.99233 50.3964...
#> 3 3 ABSENT LINESTRING (9.09874 50.5028...
#> 4 4 ABSENT LINESTRING (7.86523 49.2693...
#> 5 5 ABSENT LINESTRING (9.06117 50.4652...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_.