GDAL/OGR: vector operations

Part of the GDAL/OGR cheat sheet.

Get vector information

ogrinfo -so input.shp layer-name

Or, for all layers:

ogrinfo -al -so input.shp

Print vector extent

ogrinfo input.shp layer-name | grep Extent

List vector drivers

ogr2ogr --formats

Convert between vector formats

ogr2ogr -f "GeoJSON" output.json input.shp

Print count of features with attributes matching a given pattern

ogrinfo input.shp layer-name | grep "Search Pattern" | sort | uniq -c

Read from a zip file

This assumes that archive.zip is in the current directory. This example just extracts the file, but any ogr2ogr operation should work. It's also possible to write to existing zip files.

ogr2ogr -f 'GeoJSON' dest.geojson /vsizip/archive.zip/zipped_dir/in.geojson

Clip vectors by bounding box

ogr2ogr -f "ESRI Shapefile" output.shp input.shp -clipsrc <x_min> <y_min> <x_max> <y_max>

Clip one vector by another

ogr2ogr -clipsrc clipping_polygon.shp output.shp input.shp

Reproject vector

ogr2ogr output.shp -t_srs "EPSG:4326" input.shp

Convert MULTIPOLYGON to POLYGON

This assumes that input.shp has the largest part as the first geometry for every multipolygon. If not, parts need to be removed.

ogrinfo -dialect SQLite -sql "UPDATE input SET geometry = ST_GeometryN(geometry,1)" input.shp

Add an index to a shapefile

Add an index on an attribute:

ogrinfo example.shp -sql "CREATE INDEX ON example USING fieldname"

Add a spatial index:

ogrinfo example.shp -sql "CREATE SPATIAL INDEX ON example"

Merge features in a vector file by attribute ("dissolve")

ogr2ogr -f "ESRI Shapefile" dissolved.shp input.shp -dialect sqlite -sql "select ST_union(Geometry),common_attribute from input GROUP BY common_attribute"

Merge features ("dissolve") using a buffer to avoid slivers

ogr2ogr -f "ESRI Shapefile" dissolved.shp input.shp -dialect sqlite \
-sql "select ST_union(ST_buffer(Geometry,0.001)),common_attribute from input GROUP BY common_attribute"

Merge vector files

ogr2ogr merged.shp input1.shp
ogr2ogr -update -append merged.shp input2.shp -nln merged

Extract from a vector file based on query

To extract features with STATENAME 'New York', 'New Hampshire', etc. from states.shp:

ogr2ogr -where 'STATENAME like "New%"' states_subset.shp states.shp

To extract type 'pond' from water.shp:

ogr2ogr -where "type = pond" ponds.shp water.shp

Subset and filter all shapefiles in a directory

Assumes that the filename and the name of the layer of interest are the same:

basename -s.shp *.shp | xargs -n1 -I % ogr2ogr %-subset.shp %.shp -sql "SELECT field-one, field-two FROM '%' WHERE field-one='value-of-interest'"

Extract data from a PostGIS database to a GeoJSON file

ogr2ogr -f "GeoJSON" file.geojson PG:"host=localhost dbname=database user=user password=password" \
-sql "SELECT * from table_name"

Extract data from an ESRI REST API

Services that use ESRI maps are sometimes powered by a REST server that can provide data in a form OGR can consume. Finding the correct end point can be tricky and may take some false starts.

ogr2ogr -f GeoJSON output.geojson "http://example.com/arcgis/rest/services/SERVICE/LAYER/MapServer/0/query?f=json&returnGeometry=true&etc=..." OGRGeoJSON

Get the difference between two vector files

Given two files that both have an id field, this will produce a vector file with the part of file1.shp that doesn't intersect with file2.shp:

ogr2ogr diff.shp file1.shp -dialect sqlite \
-sql "SELECT ST_Difference(a.Geometry, b.Geometry) AS Geometry, a.id \
FROM file1 a LEFT JOIN 'file2.shp'.file2 b USING (id) WHERE a.Geometry != b.Geometry"

This assumes that file1.shp and file2.shp are both in the current directory.

Spatial join

A spatial join transfers properties from one vector layer to another based on a spatial relationship between the features. Fields from the join layer can be aggregated in the output.

Given a set of points (trees.shp) and a set of polygons (parks.shp) in the same directory, create a polygon layer with the geometries from parks.shp and summaries of some columns in trees.shp:

ogr2ogr -f 'ESRI Shapefile' output.shp parks.shp -dialect sqlite \
-sql "SELECT p.Geometry, p.id id, SUM(t.field1) field1_sum, AVG(t.field2) field2_avg
FROM parks p, 'trees.shp'.trees t WHERE ST_Contains(p.Geometry, t.Geometry) GROUP BY p.id"

Note that features from parks.shp that don't overlap with trees.shp won't be in the new file.

Upload a GeoPackage table to a PostGIS database

ogr2ogr -progress -f Postgresql pg:"dbname=database user=user password=password port=port" \
-nln new_table_name  geopackage.gpkg -sql "select * from table_in_geopackage"

Links to this page: GDAL/OGR cheat sheet

Last edited Thu 15 October 2026