GIS data seems to come in .shp (shape?) files, but it’s not like MySQL knows what to do with those. this MySQL forum post points to a PHP tool and Windows executable that promise to convert the .shp data into something more useful to MySQL.
Superfluo explains a little more, and there’s lots of .shp data to be had here.
MySQL offers ENVELOPE() to find the minimum bounding rectangle of a geometric object. The result is a polygon with four segments, defined by five points. It took me a while to make sense of it, partially because the only documentation that I’ve run across so far for POLYGON() syntax is in the ENVELOPE() function mentioned […] » about 200 words
It’s MySQL spatial data week here, though I am spreading out the posts to, um, ease the pain (or boredom). Anyway, here are some commands/functions I don’t want to forget about later:
Start with an existing table called geometry, add a spatial column and index it:
| ``` ALTER TABLE geometry ADD coord POINT NOT NULL; CREATE SPATIAL INDEX coord ON geometry (coord); ``` |
Insert some data; think in terms of POINT(X Y) or POINT(lat lon):
| ``` INSERT INTO geometry (coord) VALUES( GeomFromText( 'POINT(40 -100)' )); INSERT INTO geometry (coord) VALUES( GeomFromText( 'POINT(1 1)' )); ``` |
Get those X,Y coordinates back from the table:
| ``` SELECT X(coord), Y(coord) FROM geometry ``` |
Get points within a bounding rectangle:
| ``` SELECT MBRContains( GeomFromText( 'POLYGON((0 0,0 3,3 3,3 0,0 0))' ), coord ) FROM geometry ``` |