PostGIS Cookbook - Second Edition

How it works...

The PostGIS command, shp2pgsql, allows the user to import a shapefile in the PostGIS database. Basically, it generates a PostgreSQL dump file that can be used to load data by running it from within PostgreSQL.

The SQL file will be generally composed of the following sections:

• The CREATE TABLE section (if the -a option is not selected, in which case, the table should already exist in the database)
• The INSERT INTO section (one INSERT statement for each feature to be imported from the shapefile)
• The CREATE INDEX section (if the -I option is selected)

Unlike ogr2ogr, there is no way to make spatial or attribute selections (-spat, -where ogr2ogr options) for features in the shapefile to import. On the other hand, with the shp2pgsql ...