Import geospatial data

Geospatial data on Redivis behaves similarly to tabular data. Each feature is ingested as a single row within a table, alongside any metadata for that feature. This approach mirrors tools like PostGIS, R spatial features, and geopandas, allowing you to query and join your geospatial data at scale.

Learn more about geospatial tables on Redivis.

Supported file types

Redivis supports importing geospatial data from several common GIS formats including, GeoJSON(Lines), Shapefile, GeoPackage, Geodatabase, Parquet, and KML. Parquet files with geospatial metadata, often referred to as GeoParquet, are the most performant and robust option, though as a newer standard, these files are less common. For other geospatial file types, Redivis first converts the file to a newline-delimited GeoJSON representation (using the relevant ogr2ogr driver), and then imports the GeoJSON into a Redivis table.

Each feature will be imported as one row. The geometry column contains the WKT representation for that feature. Additional feature properties will be mapped to variables in your table, with any nested properties flattened using the . separator. Multi-layer file types, such as Shapefiles and GeoPackages, will also include a layer column to map each feature to its corresponding layer. Note that Redivis only supports 2-dimensional, unprojected (WGS84) geometries. If your file contains projection information, the coordinates will automatically be reprojected to WGS84. If there is no projection information in the file and your data is stored in a different coordinate system, the import may fail. Additionally, any extra dimensions will be stripped during ingest.

Type	Description	Notes
.geojson	GeoJSON	Assumes an object with a "Features" property, containing an array of valid geojson features. Each feature will be imported as one row, with additional properties mapped to columns in the table. Nested properties will be flattened using the . separator. Note that Redivis only supports 2-dimensional, unprojected (WGS84) geometries. Other projections might cause the import to fail, and any extra dimensions will be stripped during ingest.
.geojsonl .ndgeojson .geojsons	Newline-delimited GeoJSON	Same as the .geojson specification, except each feature is given its own line. Importing .geojsonl, as opposed to .geojson, is significantly faster.
.gdb.zip	Geodatabase (ESRI)	Zipped ESRI Geodatabase directory. The source geometries will be reprojected into WGS84. Multiple layers will automatically be appended together, and a layer variable in the Redivis table will map a given feature to the layer it came from.
.gpkg	GeoPackage	The source geometries will be reprojected into WGS84. Multiple layers will automatically be appended together, and a layer variable in the Redivis table will map a given feature to the layer it came from.
.kml	Keyhole Markup Language	Will be internally converted to .geojson, and then imported as specified above.
.shp.zip .shz	Zipped ESRI shapefile directory	Many shapefiles will be collocated with additional files containing metadata and projection information. These files are often essential to parsing the shapefile correctly, and should be uploaded together. To do so, create a ZIP directory of the folder containing your shapefile and supplemental files, with the ending .shp.zip (sometimes the ending .shz is also used). If projection information is available, the source geometries will be reprojected into WGS84. If no projection information is available, your data must be projected as WGS84, or the import will fail. Multiple layers will automatically be appended together, and a layer variable in the Redivis table will map a given feature to the layer it came from.
.shp	Shapefile	If you have additional files associated with your shapefile such as, .shx, .proj, or .dbf, create a ZIP of this folder and import according to the .shp.zip specification above. These files contain important metadata, and your import may fail without them. If you are uploading a lone shapefile, it must use the WGS84 (aka EPSG:4326) projection.
.parquet	GeoParquet	The GeoParquet specification is a modern standard for working with column-oriented geospatial data. If available, this format is the most robust and performant way to ingest geospatial features into Redivis.

Geography data in text-delimited files

In addition to uploading geospatial data using one of the formats listed above, you can also import geographic data encoded within a text-delimited file, such as a csv. In this case, the geographic data should be encoded as strings using the Well-Known Text (WKT) representation. This is also the same format used when exporting geography variables as a CSV. WKT in CSVs will be auto-detected during data ingest.

Quotas & limits

Limits for upload file size, max variables, and other parameters are specified here.