This is a collection of information on PostgreSQL and PostGIS for what I tend to use most often.
- Installing Postgres & PostGIS
- Using Postgres on the command line: PSQL
- Importing Data into Postgres
- Exporting Data from Postgres
- Joining Tables
- Upgrading Postgres
- PostGIS common commands
- Common PostGIS spatial queries
- Spatial Indexing
- Importing spatial data into PostGIS
- Exporting spatial data from PostGIS
- Other Methods of Interacting With Postgres/PostGIS
-
to install on Ubuntu do:
apt-get install postgresql
-
to install on Mac OS X first install homebrew and then do
brew install postgresql
-
to install on Windows...
Note that for OS X and Ubuntu you may need to run the above commands as a super user / using sudo
.
On Ubuntu you typically need to log in as the Postgres user and do some admin things:
- log in as postgres:
sudo -i -u postgres
- create a new user:
createuser --interactive
- type the name of the new user (no spaces!), typically the same name as your linux user that isn't root. You can add a new linux user by doing
adduser username
. - typically you want the user to have super-user privileges, so type
y
when asked. - create a new database that has the same name as the new user:
createdb username
For Mac OS X you can skip the above if you install with homebrew.
For Windows....
On Mac OS X:
-
to start the Postgres server do:
postgres -D /usr/local/var/postgres
-
or do
pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres -l /usr/local/var/postgres/server.log start
to start andpg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres -l /usr/local/var/postgres/server.log stop
to stop -
to have Postgres start everytime you boot your Mac do:
ln -sfv /usr/local/opt/postgresql/*.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents
then to check that it's working after booting do:ps ax | grep sql
-
On Ubuntu do
apt-get install postgis
-
On Mac OS X the easiest method is via homebrew:
brew install postgis
(note that if you don't have Postgres or GDAL installed already it will automatically install these first). -
to install on Windows...
psql is the interactive unix command line tool for interacting with Postgres/PostGIS.
-
log-in / connect to a database name by doing
psql -d db_name
-
for doing admin type things such as managing db users, log in as the postgres user:
psql postgres;
-
to create a database:
CREATE DATABASE database-name;
-
to connect to a database:
\c database-name;
-
to delete a database
DROP DATABASE database-name;
-
to connect when starting psql use the
-d
flag like:psql -d nyc_noise
-
to list all databases:
\l
-
to quit psql:
\q
-
to grant privileges to a user (requires logging in as
postgres
):GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE mydb TO myuser;
-
to enable the hstore extension ( for key : value pairs, useful when working with OpenStreetMap data) do:
CREATE EXTENSION hstore
-
to view columns of a table:
\d table_name
-
to list all columns in a table (helpful when you have a lot of columns!):
select column_name from information_schema.columns where table_name = 'my_table' order by column_name asc;
-
to rename a column:
alter table noise.hoods rename column noise_sqkm to complaints_sqkm;
-
to change a column's data type:
alter table noise.hoods alter column noise_area type float;
-
to compute values from two columns and assign them to another column:
update noise.hoods set noise_area = noise/(area/1000);
-
to search by wildcard use the
like
(case sensitive) orilike
(treats everything as lowercase) command:
SELECT count(*) from violations where inspection_date::text ilike '2014%';
-
to insert data into a table:
INSERT INTO table_name (column1, column2) VALUES (value1, value2);
-
to insert data from another table:
INSERT INTO table_name (value1, value2) SELECT column1, column2 FROM other_table_name
-
to remove rows using a where clause:
DELETE FROM table_name WHERE some_column = some_value
-
list all column names from a table in alphabetical order:
select column_name from information_schema.columns where table_schema = 'public' and table_name = 'bk_pluto' order by column_name;
-
List data from a column as a single row, comma separated:
SELECT array_to_string( array( SELECT id FROM table ), ',' )
SELECT string_agg(id, ',') FROM table
-
rename an existing table:
ALTER TABLE table_name RENAME TO table_name_new;
-
rename an existing column of a table:
ALTER TABLE table_name RENAME COLUMN column_name TO column_new_name;
-
Find duplicate rows in a table based on values from two fields:
select * from ( SELECT id, ROW_NUMBER() OVER(PARTITION BY merchant_Id, url ORDER BY id asc) AS Row FROM Photos ) dups where dups.Row > 1
credit: MatthewJ on stack-exchange
-
Bulk Queries are efficient when doing multiple inserts or updates of different values:
UPDATE election_results o SET votes=n.votes, pro=n.pro FROM (VALUES (1,11,9), (2,44,28), (3,25,4) ) n(county_id,votes,pro) WHERE o.county_id = n.county_id;
INSERT INTO election_results (county_id,voters,pro) VALUES (1, 11,8), (12,21,10), (78,31,27);
WITH -- write the new values n(ip,visits,clicks) AS ( VALUES ('192.168.1.1',2,12), ('192.168.1.2',6,18), ('192.168.1.3',3,4) ), -- update existing rows upsert AS ( UPDATE page_views o SET visits=n.visits, clicks=n.clicks FROM n WHERE o.ip = n.ip RETURNING o.ip ) -- insert missing rows INSERT INTO page_views (ip,visits,clicks) SELECT n.ip, n.visits, n.clicks FROM n WHERE n.ip NOT IN ( SELECT ip FROM upsert );
-
import data from a CSV file using the COPY command:
COPY noise.locations (name, complaint, descript, boro, lat, lon) FROM '/Users/chrislhenrick/tutorials/postgresql/data/noise.csv' WITH CSV HEADER;
-
import a CSV file "AS IS" using csvkit's
csvsql
(requires python, pip, csvkit, psycopg2):csvsql --db postgresql:///nyc_pluto --insert 2012_DHCR_Bldg.csv
-
export data as a CSV with Headers using COPY:
COPY dob_jobs_2014 to '/Users/chrislhenrick/development/nyc_dob_jobs/data/2014/dob_jobs_2014.csv' DELIMITER ',' CSV Header;
-
to the current workspace without saving to a file:
COPY (SELECT foo FROM bar) TO STDOUT CSV HEADER;
-
from the command line w/o connecting to postgres:
psql -d dbname -t -A -F"," -c "select * from table_name" > output.csv
From CartoDB's tutorial Join data from two tables using SQL
-
Join two tables that share a key using an
INNER JOIN
(Postgresql's default join type):SELECT table_1.the_geom,table_1.iso_code,table_2.population FROM table_1, table_2 WHERE table_1.iso_code = table_2.iso
-
To update a table's data based on that of a join:
UPDATE table_1 as t1 SET population = ( SELECT population FROM table_2 WHERE iso = t1.iso_code LIMIT 1 )
-
aggregate data on a join (if table 2 has multiple rows for a unique identifier):
SELECT table_1.the_geom, table_1.iso_code, SUM(table_2.total) as total FROM table_1, table_2 WHERE table_1.iso_code = table_2.iso GROUP BY table_1.iso_code, table_2.iso
-
update the value of a column based on the aggregate join:
UPDATE table_1 as t1 SET total = ( SELECT SUM(total) FROM table_2 WHERE iso = t1.iso_code GROUP BY iso )
This Tutorial was very helpful for upgrading on Mac OS X via homebrew.
WARNING: Back up your data before doing this incase you screw up like I did!
Basically the steps are:
-
Shut down Postgresql:
launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.postgresql.plist
-
Create a new Postgresql9.x data directory:
initdb /usr/local/var/postgres9.4 -E utf8
-
Run the pg_upgrade command:
pg_upgrade \ -d /usr/local/var/postgres \ -D /usr/local/var/postgres9.4 \ -b /usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/9.3.5_1/bin/ \ -B /usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/9.4.0/bin/ \ -v
-
Change kernel settings if necessary:
sudo sysctl -w kern.sysv.shmall=65536 sudo sysctl -w kern.sysv.shmmax=16777216
- I also ran sudo vi /etc/sysctl.conf and entered the same values:
kern.sysv.shmall=65536 kern.sysv.shmmax=16777216
- re-run the pg_upgrade command in step 3
-
Move the new data directory into place:
cd /usr/local/var mv postgres postgres9.2.4 mv postgres9.3 postgres
-
Start the new version of PostgreSQL:
launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.postgresql.plist
- check to make sure it worked:
psql postgres -c "select version()" psql -l
-
Cleanup:
vacuumdb --all --analyze-only
analyze_new_cluster.sh
*delete_old_cluster.sh
*brew cleanup postgresql
(* scripts were generated in same the directory wherepg_upgrade
was ran)
PostGIS is the extension for Postgres that allows for working with geometry data types and doing GIS operations in Postgres.
-
to enable PostGIS in a Postgres database do:
CREATE EXTENSION postgis;
-
to enable PostGIS topology do:
CREATE EXTENSION postgis_topology;
-
to support OSM tags do:
CREATE EXTENSION hstore;
-
create a new table for data from a CSV that has lat and lon columns:
create table noise.locations ( name varchar(100), complaint varchar(100), descript varchar(100), boro varchar(50), lat float8, lon float8, geom geometry(POINT, 4326) );
-
inputing values for the geometry type after loading data from a CSV:
update noise.locations set the_geom = ST_SetSRID(ST_MakePoint(lon, lat), 4326);
-
adding a geometry column in a non-spatial table:
select addgeometryColumn('table_name', 'geom', 4326, 'POINT', 2);
-
calculating area in EPSG 4326:
alter table noise.hoods set area = (select ST_Area(geom::geography));
You may view more of these in my intro to Visualizing Geospatial Data with CartoDB.
Find all polygons from dataset A that intersect points from dataset B:
SELECT a.*
FROM table_a_polygons a, table_b_points b
WHERE ST_Intersects(a.the_geom, b.the_geom);
Find all rows in a polygon dataset that intersect a given point:
-- note: geometry for point must be in the order lon, lat (x, y)
SELECT * FROM nyc_tenants_rights_service_areas
where
ST_Intersects(
ST_GeomFromText(
'Point(-73.982557 40.724435)', 4326
),
nyc_tenants_rights_service_areas.the_geom
);
Or using ST_Contains
:
SELECT * FROM nyc_tenants_rights_service_areas
where
st_contains(
nyc_tenants_rights_service_areas.the_geom,
ST_GeomFromText(
'Point(-73.917104 40.694827)', 4326
)
);
Counting points inside a polygon:
With ST_Containts():
SELECT us_counties.the_geom_webmercator,us_counties.cartodb_id,
count(quakes.the_geom)
AS total
FROM us_counties JOIN quakes
ON st_contains(us_counties.the_geom,quakes.the_geom)
GROUP BY us_counties.cartodb_id;
To update a column from table A with the number of points from table B that intersect table A's polygons:
update noise.hoods set num_complaints = (
select count(*)
from noise.locations
where
ST_Intersects(
noise.locations.geom,
noise.hoods.geom
)
);
Make a line from a series of points
SELECT ST_MakeLine (the_geom ORDER BY id ASC)
AS the_geom, route
FROM points_table
GROUP BY route;
Order points in a table by distance to a given lat lon
This one uses CartoDB's built-in function CDB_LatLng
which is short hand for doing:
SELECT ST_Transform( ST_GeomFromText( 'Point(-73.982557 40.724435)',),4326)
SELECT * FROM table
ORDER BY the_geom <->
CDB_LatLng(42.5,-73) LIMIT 10;
Access the previous row of data and get value (time, value, number, etc) difference
WITH calc_duration AS (
SELECT
cartodb_id,
extract(epoch FROM (date_time - lag(date_time,1) OVER(ORDER BY date_time))) AS
duration_in_seconds
FROM tracking_eric
ORDER BY date_time
)
UPDATE tracking_eric
SET duration_in_seconds = calc_duration.duration_in_seconds
FROM calc_duration
WHERE calc_duration.cartodb_id = tracking_eric.cartodb_id
select population density by county
In this one we cast the geometry data type to the geography data type to get units of measure in meters.
SELECT pop_sqkm,
round( pop / (ST_Area(the_geom::geography)/1000000))
as psqkm
FROM us_counties
Makes queries hella fast. OSGeo has a good tutorial.
- Basically the steps are:
CREATE INDEX table_name_gix ON table_name USING GIST (geom);
VACUUM ANALYZE table_name
CLUSTER table_name USING table_name_gix;
*Do this every time after making changes to your dataset or importing new data.
-
Do:
shp2pgsql -I -s 4326 nyc-pediacities-hoods-v3-edit.shp noise.hoods > noise.sql
Or for using the geography data type do:
shp2pgsql -G -I nyc-pediacities-hoods-v3-edit.shp noise.nyc-pediacities-hoods-v3-edit_geographic > nyc_pediacities-hoods-v3-edit.sql
-
Do:
psql -d nyc_noise -f noise.sql
Or for the geography type above:
psql -d nyc_noise -f nyc_pediacities-hoods-v3-edit.sql
To import an OpenStreetMap extract in PBF format do:
osm2pgsql -H localhost --hstore-all -d nyc_from_osm ~/Downloads/newyorkcity.osm.pbf
Example importing a GeoJSON file into a database called nyc_pluto:
ogr2ogr -f PostgreSQL \
PG:"host='localhost' user='chrislhenrick' port='5432' \
dbname='nyc_pluto' password=''" \
bk_map_pluto_4326.json -nln bk_pluto
The two main tools used to export spatial data with more complex geometries from Postgres/PostGIS than points are pgsql2shp
and ogr2ogr
.
pgsql2shp
is a tool that comes installed with PostGIS that allows for exporting data from a PostGIS database to a shapefile format. To use it you need to specify a file path to the output shapefile (just stating the basename with no extension will output in the current working directory), a host name (usually this is localhost
), a user name, a password for the user, a database name, and an SQL query.
pgsql2shp -f <path to output shapefile> -h <hostname> -u <username> -P <password> databasename "<query>"
A sample export of a shapefile called my_data
from a database called my_db
looks like this:
pgsql2shp -f my_data -h localhost -u clhenrick -P 'mypassword' my_db "SELECT * FROM my_data "
Note: You may need to set the GDAL_DATA
path if you git this error:
ERROR 4: Unable to open EPSG support file gcs.csv.
Try setting the GDAL_DATA environment variable to point to the
directory containing EPSG csv files.
If on Linux / Mac OS do this: export GDAL_DATA=/usr/local/share/gdal
If on Windows do this: C:\> set GDAL_DATA=C:\GDAL\data
To Export Data
Use ogr2ogr as follows to export a table (in this case a table called dob_jobs_2014
) to a GeoJSON
file (in this case a file called dob_jobs_2014_geocoded.geojson):
ogr2ogr -f GeoJSON -t_srs EPSG:4326 dob_jobs_2014_geocoded.geojson \
PG:"host='localhost' dbname='dob_jobs' user='chrislhenrick' password='' port='5432'" \
-sql "SELECT bbl, house, streetname, borough, jobtype, jobstatus, existheight, proposedheight, \
existoccupancy, proposedoccupany, horizontalenlrgmt, verticalenlrgmt, ownerbusinessname, \
ownerhousestreet, ownercitystatezip, ownerphone, jobdescription, geom \
FROM dob_jobs_2014 WHERE geom IS NOT NULL"
- note: you must select the column containing the geometry (usually
geom
orwkb_geometry
) for your exported layer to have geometry data.
to do...