Closed stijnherreman closed 1 month ago
IMHO you are right that the whole shapefile related API is opaque and redundant. A cleanup/new lean API is appreciated, what do you think @airbreather.
I totally agree that the API today is horrendous. Not only is it hard to use, but it's also slow and can't really be made to be fast.
In one internal project I've been working on, the reader code was usable at a prototyping stage, but it very quickly became a huge bottleneck to the point that I wound up reimplementing just the parts that we needed.
Even just one feature, DBF encodings, seems to barely work when you actually try to use it.
IMO, the shapefile project is in desperate need of a rewrite, starting from just the minimum needed to implement fast and robust support for reading / writing SHP + SHX and (separately) DBF, and then add layers on top of it to support things like IEnumerable<T>
and IDataReader
.
I can come up with some outlines for how I think this should look, balancing performance and usability.
remove
IDataReader
implementation, doesn't really make sense and some methods have nonsense implementations (e.g.return 0;
no matter the method arguments)
To this specific point, IDataReader
is a very... comprehensive... interface that supports a lot more than the version of the dBASE format that we implement.
I do endorse exposing an IDataReader
implementation, as it (in theory) allows someone to connect their shapefile data source to any of a number of external APIs that use ADO.NET to model their data access.
That said, I do not endorse having that IDataReader
implementation be the primary method for reading data from shapefiles as appears to be the case right now.
I agree with @airbreather except for keeping IDataReader
but I can live with that if it's not the primary method for reading data as suggested. Also related is this issue https://github.com/NetTopologySuite/NetTopologySuite.IO.ShapeFile/issues/2
I can come up with some outlines for how I think this should look, balancing performance and usability.
I've made a basic start over here: https://github.com/NetTopologySuite/NetTopologySuite.IO.ShapeFile/wiki/Ideas-for-new-API-(Reading)
So far, I've just jotted what's been on my mind for reading, since I've been thinking about it a lot recently.
Note that, whereas writing is much more straightforward than reading for most formats, with shapefiles, it's kind-of the opposite. The format makes quite a few tradeoffs to help make it easier to develop an efficient reader, at the expense of making it impossible to develop an efficient forward-only streaming writer unless you have significant a priori knowledge of the entire dataset's contents.
.shp
file.
.dbf
files, you must specify the length of each field and (for non-integer numbers) the maximum number of digits to the right of the decimal point.
int
field in a (mostly) forward-only writing mode, we're going to have to either read through the entire input at least twice, or (more likely) we're going to triple the width that we give to that field in order to support the theoretical maximum.Long story short... writing is more complicated. Even finding the right trade-offs is probably going to be a nontrivial process:
Func<(Stream, Stream, Stream)>
to create new .shp
/ .shx
/ .dbf
files if we run out of room in the first one before we run out of records?string
s, 9-character int
s) unless you tell us otherwise?.dbf
?
IFeature
instances without them?IFeature
?IReadOnlyList<T>
", so we can loop over it as many times as we want to figure out the perfectly optimal way to write it out (column widths, dataset split points, etc.).IEnumerable<T>
", so we need the caller to tell us some minimum amount of metadata, and we may all have to live with suboptimal parts in order to only ever loop through the input once.I've sorta got a start for the writing side of things here: https://github.com/NetTopologySuite/NetTopologySuite.IO.ShapeFile/wiki/Ideas-for-new-API-(Writing)
It is a tough challenge to balance efficiency, ease of use, and correctness for this, so especially on the writer side, I'd appreciate feedback on some of the ideas over there...
I propose to have only one Header - ShapefileHeader which should deliver from DbaseFileHeader. This new Header should have first field assigned to SHAPE column as it is already done internally.
Most of the issues were resolved by #48.
Hi,
I'm looking to migrate away from an internal shapefile library (very old NTS fork + modifications), to this module. While figuring out how to use the API, I've also reviewed it and found that there is room for improvement. Most notably,
IEnumerable<T>
should be added to the non-Extended
classes, but it's not a quick fix that I can do in a small PR.ShapefileDataReader
currently outputs anICustomTypeDescriptor
backed by an internal type, which is not ideal.A number of things that I would like to improve on:
IEnumerable<T>
ArrayList
to hold attributes) and pull this API out of the .NET 1.x eraExtended
classes into the non-Extended
classesIDataReader
implementation, doesn't really make sense and some methods have nonsense implementations (e.g.return 0;
no matter the method arguments)[TestCase(@"D:\Daten\Geofabrik\roads.shp")]
I should be able to do a good part of the necessary work, but I would like input from the current maintainers before going ahead.
Below is the public API of the read-related classes that I reviewed. I have not (yet) gone over write-related classes because they're not the focus of the project I work on. (The list was compiled by hand, so there may be errors.)
Public API
.dbf
NetTopologySuite.IO.DbaseFileReader
Implements:
System.Collections.IEnumerable
NetTopologySuite.IO.ShapeFile.Extended.DBaseReader
Implements:
System.IDisposable
,System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable<NetTopologySuite.Features.IAttributesTable>
.shp
NetTopologySuite.IO.ShapefileReader
Implements:
System.Collections.IEnumerable
NetTopologySuite.IO.ShapeFile.Extended.ShapeReader
Implements:
System.IDisposable
.dbf + .shp
NetTopologySuite.IO.ShapefileDataReader
Implements:
System.Data.IDataReader
,System.IDisposable
,System.Collections.IEnumerable
NetTopologySuite.IO.ShapeFile.Extended.ShapeDataReader
Implements:
System.IDisposable