Majority of map-related data provided by government agencies is in the form of geospatial vector data stored in a semi-proprietary and complex format known as a Shapefile.

Shapefiles are technology from the past when desktops ruled supreme. Nowadays, developers want a simpler way to access data.

It is not a snap, importing a Shapefile (a file containing geospatial vector data) into a document-oriented database.

Step 1:

We will use ogr2ogr to convert a Shapefile to GeoJSON.

$ brew install goal

$ ogr2ogr -f GeoJSON -t_srs crs:84 file_name.geojson file_name.shp

-t_srs cos:84 option ensures that the right projection is being rendered and that GPS coordinates are properly encoded.

Step 2:

We will use mongoimport to import the file into MongoDB.

mongoimport --db dev -c points --file "file_name.geojson" --jsonArray

--jsonArray tells mongoimport to expect an array of objects so we might have to open the Shapefile and pull out the “features” array.

Alternatively we can use --type json option instead:

mongoimport --db dev -c points --file "file_name.geojson" --type json

Step 3:

To make the data queryable we have to add a 2dsphere index to the field that contains geometry information. In our case the field was actually named “geometry.”

"geometry": {
	"type": "LineString",
	"coordinates": [
		[-122.466597727410203, 37.72592447531234],
		[-122.466538207925268, 37.726008134595659],
		[-122.466545014733939, 37.726092655875313],
		[-122.46662269919527, 37.726149395842484],
		[-122.466715781686247, 37.726165938701818],
		[-122.466832802132004, 37.726142308565606],
		[-122.466897677698299, 37.72606137786606],
		[-122.466866500919124, 37.7259772625764],
		[-122.466740909948271, 37.725929815795403],
		[-122.466597727410203, 37.72592447531234]
	]
}

db.sfsweeproutes.ensureIndex({"geometry":"2dsphere"})

Step 4:

Let’s have fun!

db.sfsweeproutes.find({geometry:{ $near :{$geometry: { type: "Point",  coordinates:[ -122.46654501473394, 37.72609265587531 ] },$minDistance: 0, $maxDistance: 10}}})