current community

your communities

more stack exchange communities

Stack Exchange
tour help
Take the 2-minute tour ×
Geographic Information Systems Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for cartographers, geographers and GIS professionals. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 2 down vote favorite

What is the right way to insert a Point to a PostGIS database using Python?

share|improve this question

1 Answer 1

up vote 3 down vote

First, install the psycopg2 package, a Pythonic interface for PostgreSQL.

Then, use ST_MakePoint: 

>>> import psycopg2
>>> conn = psycopg2.connect(dbname=..., port=..., user=...,
                            password=..., host=...)
>>> x, y, z, = 32, 34, 0
>>> cur.execute("SELECT ST_SetSRID(ST_MakePoint(%s, %s, %s),4326);", (x, y, z))
>>> cur.fetchall()
[('01010000A0E6100000000000000000404000000000000041400000000000000000',)]

ST_AsText can be used to validate the values:

>>> cur.execute("SELECT ST_AsText(ST_SetSRID(ST_MakePoint(%s, %s, %s),4326));", (x, y, z))
>>> cur.fetchall()
[('POINT Z (32 34 0)',)]

Notes

  • Remember that (lat, lon) is (y, x), not (x, y).
  • Always use parameters, rather than string manipulations, to prevent SQL injection. In this examples we tupled (x, y, z) at the end so that psycopg2 can handle the substitution.
share|improve this answer

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.