Shapefile
Shapefile is one of the oldest vector formats around. It is a general binary format supporting simple features (points, lines, polygons, and their multipart counterparts) and their attributes. It is widely supported by GIS software. The format was initially created for ArcView 2 and later open sourced by Esri. If we need a format which is most likely supported by the destination software, Shapefile is a safe choice. Shapefiles can only store one layer and every layer stored as a Shapefile usually consists of four different files. The shp file (which we browse if we manually open a Shapefile in QGIS) stores the geometry data in a binary format, the prj file stores the projection of the layer, the shx file stores indexing information ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access