sridentify

Overview

sridentify is a command-line utility and Python API for quickly identifying the EPSG Registry Code from a .prj file typically associated with ESRI Shapefiles. It ships with an SQLite database containing mappings of Well-known Text strings to EPSG codes, the bulk of which was manually sourced and cleaned from an ESRI website. It's not complete, however, and in the event you test it against a WKT string not in the database it can optionally search the prj2epsg.org API. If the API returns an exact match, that code is returned and saved to the SQLite database. Handling several partial matches is currently planned, but not yet implemented. This feature can be disabled with the -n or --no-remote-api flags when running sridentify on the command line, or by instantiating with call_remote_api=False when using the Python API.

sridentify is written in Python, 2- and 3-compatible, and has no external dependencies.

Installation

Linux, OS X, other *nixes

pip install --user sridentify

The --user is important if installing system-wide (i.e., not in a virtualenv), because the user running sridentify must have write permissions on the SQLite database in the event that sridentify tries to save a new result fetched from the prj2epsg API to the database.

On most Linux systems pip install --user will install to $HOME/.local and place the executable script in $HOME/.local/bin. You should add this to your $PATH if you want to run sridentify without having to specify the full location to the executable. On OS X pip install --user should install it to somewhere already in your $PATH, but this may depend on how Python and/or pip was installed.

Windows

Anaconda is your best bet for installing sridentify on Windows. Assuming you have installed Anaconda, then launching an Anaconda prompt (should be available in the Start menu under Anaconda) and running pip install sridentify should work and make the sridentify executable available on your %PATH%. If you don't want to or cannot use Anaconda you should also be able to build and install sridentify systemwide or in any virtual environment with setuptools.

Quickstart

Command-Line usage

usage: sridentify [-h] [-n] prj

Identify an EPSG code from a .prj file

positional arguments:
  prj                  The .prj file

optional arguments:
  -h, --help           show this help message and exit
  -n, --no-remote-api  Do not call the prj2epsg.org API if no match found in
                       the database

Cookbook

Get the EPSG code from a .prj file

$ sridentify seattle_land_use.prj
2285

Example use in conjunction with the shp2pgsql command-line utility that ships with PostGIS. Assuming you have a PostGIS-enabled database named seattle, and you have a shapefile called seattle_land_use that you want to import into that database but you're not sure what spatial projection the shapefile uses:

$ shp2pgsql -s $(sridentify seattle_land_use.prj) -g the_geom -ID seattle_land_use.shp | psql -d seattle

Do not call the prj2epsg.org API if no match found in the database (e.g., if running in a script or if the API is unresponsive):

$ sridentify --no-remote-api seattle_land_use.prj

Let's say you have a directory full of shapefiles of different projections that you want to bulk import into PostGIS. You could use sridentify -n in a script to skip calling the API for those that don't match anything in the database for speed's sake (and politeness of not hammering away at the free prj2epsg.org service!). For example:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

for p in $(find . -name "*.prj")
do
    epsg="$(sridentify -n $p)"
    if [[ ! -z "$epsg" ]]
    then
        shp2pgsql -s $epsg -g the_geom -ID "${p/prj/shp}" | psql -d my_db_name
    else
        # log the unmatched prjs to a file
        echo "no EPSG code found for $p" >> bulk_import.log
    fi
done

Python API usage

>>> from sridentify import Sridentify

>>> # Read .prj file from the filesystem
>>> ident = Sridentify()
>>> ident.from_file('/path/to/seattle_land_use.prj')
>>> ident.get_epsg()
2285

>>> # Paste in Well-Known Text string directly
>>> ident = Sridentify(prj="""PROJCS["NAD_1983_StatePlane_Washington_North_FIPS_4601_Feet",GEOGCS["GCS_North_American_1983",DATUM["D_North_American_1983",SPHEROID["GRS_1980",6378137.0,298.257222101]],PRIMEM["Greenwich",0.0],UNIT["Degree",0.0174532925199433]],PROJECTION["Lambert_Conformal_Conic"],PARAMETER["False_Easting",1640416.666666667],PARAMETER["False_Northing",0.0],PARAMETER["Central_Meridian",-120.8333333333333],PARAMETER["Standard_Parallel_1",47.5],PARAMETER["Standard_Parallel_2",48.73333333333333],PARAMETER["Latitude_Of_Origin",47.0],UNIT["Foot_US",0.3048006096012192]]""")
>>> ident.get_epsg()
2285

>>> # Do not call the prj2epsg.org API if no match found
>>> ident = Sridentify(call_remote_api=False)
>>> ident.from_file('foo.prj')
>>> ident.get_epsg()  # would return None
>>>

>>> # Instantiate with strict=False to log errors and return None
>>> # instead of raising Exceptions when trying to read in problematic files.
>>> ident = Sridentify(strict=False)
>>> # example: accidentally trying to read in a binary file
>>> ident.from_file('seattle_land_use.shp') # this would log an error message
>>> ident.get_epsg()  # would return None
>>> ident = Sridentify(strict=True)  # the default
>>> ident.from_file('seattle_land_use.shp')
>>> # Will raise UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0x88 in position 10: invalid start byte

>>> # Write out a WKT string in the database to a file
>>> ident = Sridentify()
>>> ident.from_epsg(4269)
>>> ident.to_prj('/path/to/4269.prj')

Background

More and more governments and organizations are making their GIS data available to the public on open data portals. Local governments typically store and use GIS data in the map projection most appropriate for their location on planet Earth. For the United States, this is typically the State Plane Coordinate System. Other common systems are Universal Transverse Mercator, or a highly localized system that is accurate only within the geographic boundaries of the entity's jusrisdiction.

ESRI Shapefiles are a common format for publishing GIS data, although a "shapefile" with the .shp extension is really just data describing the geometry. Shapefiles are typically bundled with a dBase file ( .dbf extension ) which contains data attributes about the geometry and a small text file describing the spatial reference system of the geomtry in WKT format.

sridentify is not meant to be a full-fledged client library to the actual EPSG database. If that's what you need, you're probably looking for something like python-epsg.

Rather, sridentify is for those looking to quickly identify the EPSG code of a shapefile, especially when importing into PostGIS. Of course, you could use ogr2ogr to convert everything into a web-friendly projection, like:

$ ogr2ogr -f PostgreSQL -t_srs EPSG:4326 PG:dbname=seattle seattle_land_use.shp

But transforming spatial data from one projection to another is a lossy operation and can result in coordinate drift. Ideally, you would store the original data in its original coordinate system and then transform copies as needed.