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observatory-extension/doc/boundaries_functions.md

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Boundaries Functions

If you are using the boundary methods from the Data Observatory, use the following functions to retrieve Boundary data. You can get global boundary geometries by point or polygon geometries.

OBS_GetGeometry(point_geometry, boundary_id)

The OBS_GetGeometry(point_geometry, boundary_id) function returns a boundary geometry defined as overlapping the point geometry and from the desired boundary set (e.g. Census Tracts). See the Boundary ID glossary. This is useful for performing aggregations of points.

Arguments

Name Description
point_geometry a WGS84 polygon geometry (the_geom)
boundary_id a boundary identifier from the Boundary ID glossary

Returns

Value Description
geom WKB geometry

Example

Overwrite a point geometry with a boundary geometry that contains it in your table

UPDATE tablename SET the_geom = OBS_GetGeometry(the_geom, ' "us.census.tiger".block_group')

OBS_GetGeometryId(point_geometry, boundary_id)

The OBS_GetGeometryId(point_geometry, boundary_id) returns a unique geometry_id for the boundary geometry that contains a given point geometry. See the Boundary ID glossary. The function can be combined with OBS_GetGeometryById(geometry_id) to create a point aggregation workflow.

Arguments

Name Description
point_geometry a WGS84 polygon geometry (the_geom)
boundary_id a boundary identifier from the Boundary ID glossary

Returns

Value Description
geometry_id a string identifier of a geometry in the Boundaries

Example

Write the geometry_id that contains the point geometry for every row as a new column in your table

UPDATE tablename SET new_column_name = OBS_GetGeometryId(the_geom, ' "us.census.tiger".block_group')

OBS_GetGeometryById(geometry_id)

The OBS_GetGeometryById(geometry_id) returns the boundary geometry for a unique geometry_id. A geometry_id can be found using the OBS_GetGeometryId(point_geometry, boundary_id) function described above.

Arguments

Name Description
geometry_id a string identifier for a Boundary geometry

Returns

A JSON object containing the following properties

Key Description
geom a WGS84 polygon geometry

Example

Use a table of geometry_id to select the unique boundaries. Useful with the Table from query option in CartoDB.

SELECT OBS_GetGeometryById(geometry_id) the_geom, geometry_id FROM tablename GROUP BY geometry_id