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I have a MultiPolygon representation of some shapes in POSTGIS, I am trying to convert them to Polygon data.

I tried, st_geometryn(r.geom, 1) but that didnt work because the way polygons are embedded I think. Just returns a partial.

Tried ST_ConcaveHull(ST_Collect(r.geom), 0.99), no luck returns nothing

Tried:

SELECT f.gid, ST_AsGeoJSON(ST_Union(f.geom)) as singlegeom FROM (SELECT gid, 
       (ST_Dump(geom)).geom As geom FROM public.nyc_boroughs ) As f GROUP BY gid"

but getting back to Multi Polygon,

I feel like a little bit of direction could help me figure out.

Data is here http://www.sendspace.com/file/2savyw

urcm
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Igal Nassima
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1 Answers1

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The polygons features are indeed multipart, so st_geometryn(r.geom, 1) will discard data.

If you are just trying to get the footprint for the polygon(s), use ST_ConvexHull(r.geom). Or to apply this only to true multi-part geometries, but keep single-part:

SELECT
  CASE
    WHEN ST_NumGeometries(r.geom) > 1 THEN
      ST_ConvexHull(r.geom)
    ELSE
      ST_GeometryN(r.geom, 1)
  END AS geom
FROM mytable AS r
...

Warning: the former multi-part geometries might look funny.

Mike T
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  • Thank you for the response, I just realized ST_ConcaveHull is only available at v2.0+, and ST_ConvexHull is not precise enough for what I need. (see http://bit.ly/129VmAo). I am gonna upgrade, test will post results. – Igal Nassima Dec 13 '12 at 07:22
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    upgraded to 2.0 and used ST_ConcaveHull, works pretty well, here is a result http://bit.ly/Zm3uOz – Igal Nassima Dec 13 '12 at 20:31
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    Yup, that certainly looks good. However, I'd only use a concave hull functions on true multi-part geometries, using the CASE ... statement provided, simply because it can unnecessarily alter a single-part geometry. – Mike T Dec 13 '12 at 22:48