Manipulate shapefile attribute table using R
I've posted this question on the GIS stack exchange, but it's not seeing much traffic.
I'm a GIS user who's been using R for stats for a few years, and I'm excited to see a lot of new GIS capabilities being released (raster, shapefiles, rgdal, etc).
I've done a lot of database and table manipulation in R, so being able to add and remove attributes from shapefiles is a powerful potential.
I'm hoping I'm just missing what's out there, but I can't seem to find a good method for adding or removing attributes from a shapefile attribute table.
Can anyone from Overflow respond to my GIS post? Or can I be advised how to get my list attribute table into a dataframe and back to replace the current attribute table?
Edit progress
Some progress since my original post:
This is getting at figuring out how to take my attribute table appart (.dbf), add stuff, and now I'm trying to put it back together to replace the original dbf.
>libary(raster); library(rgdal); library(shapefiles)
>shp<-shapefile(Shape) # D.C. area airport polygons
>summary(shp) #Shapefile properties
Object of class SpatialPointsDataFrame
Coordinates:
min max
coords.x1 281314.2 337904.7
coords.x2 4288867.0 4313507.0
Is projected: TRUE
proj4string :
[+proj=utm +zone=18 +datum=WGS84 +units=m +no_defs +ellps=WGS84 +towgs84=0,0,0]
Number of points: 4
Data attributes:
ObjectID LOCID NAME FIELD STATE STATE_FIPS ACAIS TOT_ENP TYPE
Min. :134.0 Length:4 Length:4 Length:4 Length:4 Length:4 Length:4 Min. : 271 Length:4
1st Qu.:242.8 Class :character Class :character Class :character Class :character Class :character Class :character 1st Qu.: 3876 Class :character
Median :339.0 Mode :character Mode :character Mode :character Mode :character Mode :character Mode :character Median :3409113 Mode :character
Mean :310.0 Mean :3717251
3rd Qu.:406.2 3rd Qu.:7122488
Max. :428.0
>shp.AT<-read.dbf(gsub(".shp", ".dbf", Shape), header=TRUE) #Read in the attribute table from the .dbf
> shp.AT # First object in the dbf looks like an attribute table!
$dbf
ObjectID LOCID NAME FIELD STATE STATE_FIPS ACAIS TOT_ENP TYPE
1 134 ADW Andrews AFB <NA> Maryland 24 Y 5078 Military
2 279 DCA Washington National <NA> Virginia 51 Y 6813148 <NA>
3 399 HEF Manassas Regional Harry P Davis Field Virginia 51 Y 271 Regional
4 428 IAD Washington Dulles International <NA> Virginia 51 Y 8050506 International
$header
$header$file.version
[1] 3
$header$file.year
[1] 113
$header$file.month
[1] 4
$header$file.day
[1] 12
$header$num.records
[1] 4
$header$header.length
[1] 321
$header$record.length
[1] 148
$header$fields
NAME TYPE LENGTH DECIMAL
1 ObjectID N 10 0
2 LOCID C 5 0
3 NAME C 45 0
4 FIELD C 30 0
5 STATE C 24 0
6 STATE_FIPS C 2 0
7 ACAIS C 1 0
8 TOT_ENP N 11 0
9 TYPE C 20 0
>shp.tab<-as.data.frame(shp.AT[1]) # Grab the first object of the .dbf as a data.frame
> shp.tab # First list object
dbf.ObjectID dbf.LOCID dbf.NAME dbf.FIELD dbf.STATE dbf.STATE_FIPS dbf.ACAIS dbf.TOT_ENP dbf.TYPE
1 134 ADW Andrews AFB <NA> Maryland 24 Y 5078 Military
2 279 DCA Washington National <NA> Virginia 51 Y 6813148 <NA>
3 399 HEF Manassas Regional Harry P Davis Field Virginia 51 Y 271 Regional
4 428 IAD Washington Dulles International <NA> Virginia 51 Y 8050506 International
> shp.tab$NewAT<-1:nrow(shp.tab) # Add my new attribute
> shp.tab # Added my new attribute, now to get this back into my shapefile
dbf.ObjectID dbf.LOCID dbf.NAME dbf.FIELD dbf.STATE dbf.STATE_FIPS dbf.ACAIS dbf.TOT_ENP dbf.TYPE NewAT
1 134 ADW Andrews AFB <NA> Maryland 24 Y 5078 Military 1
2 279 DCA Washington National <NA> Virginia 51 Y 6813148 <NA> 2
3 399 HEF Manassas Regional Harry P Davis Field Virginia 51 Y 271 Regional 3
4 428 IAD Washington Dulles International <NA> Virginia 51 Y 8050506 International 4
>write.dbf(shp.tab, gsub(".shp", ".dbf", Shape)) # Knew this wouldn't work, but demonstrate attempt to write this object as .dbf.
ERROR:
invalid subscript type 'list'
> shp.AT[1]<-shp.tab # Try replacing the old Object[1] with my new table containing the new attribute.
> shp.AT # The table portion fo the shp.AT is gone. No attributes.
$dbf
[1] 134 279 399 428
$header
$header$file.version
[1] 3
$header$file.year
[1] 113
$header$file.month
[1] 4
$header$file.day
[1] 12
$header$num.records
[1] 4
>write.dbf(shp.AT, gsub(".shp", ".dbf", Shape)) # If I go ahead and overwrite anyway...
My attributes are gone and replaced with an attribute table that contains a single field "dataframe". I recurse the script to again read the attribute table.
> shp.tab
dataframe
1 134
2 279
3 399
4 428
So, I think I'm close. Can anyone help me get this back into the shapefile attribute table? Or, is there a way better method?
Thanks
Answer
I'm not sure I totally understand what you're trying to do. It looks like you just want to add a new column to the attribute table? If this is right, then just treat it like any dataframe.
library(rgdal)
dsn <- system.file("vectors", package = "rgdal")
shp<-readOGR(dsn = dsn, layer = 'cities')
shp$NewAT<-1:nrow(shp)
This works perfectly with a shapefile I have on my system. I typically rely on rgdal to read in my shapefiles, using the readOGR() function. I'm fairly certain the shapefile() function you were calling also calls rgdal.
Edited to add reproducable dataset.