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GeoETL v0.5.0: Spatial UDFs and GeoArrow Native Support

· 2 min read
Yogesh
Yogesh
GeoETL Maintainer

TL;DR: GeoETL v0.5.0 adds spatial UDFs (ST_Distance, ST_Point, ST_GeomFromText) powered by GEOS for spatial operations in SQL queries during conversion.

What's New​

v0.4.0 added SQL queries. v0.5.0 adds spatial operations to those queries.

New Functions:

FunctionDescription
ST_DistanceMinimum distance between two geometries
ST_Point / ST_MakePointCreate point from X, Y coordinates
ST_GeomFromTextParse WKT to geometry
ST_GeomFromWKBTag WKB binary as geometry

Example: Pairwise Distances

geoetl-cli convert \
  -i cities.geojson \
  -o distances.csv \
  --input-driver GeoJSON \
  --output-driver CSV \
  --sql "SELECT a.name, b.name, ST_Distance(a.geometry, b.geometry) as dist
         FROM cities a CROSS JOIN cities b
         WHERE a.name < b.name"

Example: Distance from Reference Point

geoetl-cli convert \
  -i stores.csv \
  -o sorted.csv \
  --input-driver CSV \
  --output-driver CSV \
  --geometry-column wkt \
  --sql "SELECT name, ST_Distance(ST_GeomFromText(wkt), ST_Point(-73.98, 40.74)) as dist
         FROM stores ORDER BY dist"

Example: Create Points from Columns

geoetl-cli convert \
  -i data.csv \
  -o data.geojson \
  --input-driver CSV \
  --output-driver GeoJSON \
  --sql "SELECT name, ST_Point(lon, lat) as geometry FROM data"

GeoArrow Native Support​

Optimized code paths for GeoArrow types:

  • geoarrow.point - zero-copy coordinate access
  • geoarrow.wkb - binary geometry
  • geoarrow.geometry - mixed types from GeoJSON

Static GEOS Linking​

Release binaries now include GEOS statically linked. No system dependencies required.

What's Next​

v0.6.0: ST_Buffer, ST_Contains, ST_Intersects, FlatGeobuf support, Shapefile read support.

See the Roadmap.