wkls: Well-Known Locations

wkls makes it easy to find global administrative boundaries — from countries to cities — using readable, chainable Python syntax.

It reads Overture Maps Foundation GeoParquet data (version 2025-09-24.0) directly from the AWS Open Data Registry.

It reads directly from GeoParquet data (version 2025-09-24.0) hosted on the AWS Open Data Registry.

You can instantly get geometries in formats like Well-known Text (WKT), Well-known Binaries (WKB), HexWKB, GeoJSON, and SVG:

import wkls

# prints "MULTIPOLYGON (((-122.9915659 37.7672733...)))"
print(wkls.us.ca.sanfrancisco.wkt())

#prints "2025-09-24.0"
print(wkls.overture_version())

Installation

pip install wkls

This command alsoloads DuckDB with its related spatial extension.

Quick Start

After installing wkls, run the following commands to get started:

import wkls

# Get country geometry
usa_wkt = wkls.us.wkt()
print(f"USA geometry: {usa_wkt[:50]}...")

# Get state/region geometry  
california_geojson = wkls.us.ca.geojson()

# Get city geometry
sf_svg = wkls.us.ca.sanfrancisco.svg()

# Check dataset version
print(f"Using Overture Maps data: {wkls.overture_version()}")

# Explore available data
print(f"Countries: {len(wkls.countries())}")
print(f"US regions: {len(wkls.us.regions())}")
print(f"CA counties: {len(wkls.us.ca.counties())}")

Usage

Accessing geometry

wkls supports up to 3 chained attributes:

1. Country (required) – must be a 2-letter ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code (e.g. us, de, fr)
2. Region (optional) – must be a valid region ISO code suffix (e.g. ca for US-CA, ny for US-NY)
3. Place (optional) – a name match against subtypes: county, locality, or neighborhood

Examples:

wkls.us.wkt()                          # country: United States
wkls.us.ca.wkt()                       # region: California
wkls.us.ca.sanfrancisco.wkt()          # city/county: San Francisco
wkls["us"]["ca"]["sanfrancisco"].wkt() # dictionary-style access

Supported formats

wkls supports the following formats:

• .wkt() – Well-Known Text
• .wkb() – Raw binary WKB
• .hexwkb() – Hex-encoded WKB
• .geojson() – GeoJSON string
• .svg() – SVG path string

Example: Find the administrative boundary of San Francisco, California

Chained expressions like wkls.us.ca.sanfrancisco return a WKL object. Internally, this holds a Pandas DataFrame containing one or more rows that match the given chain.

        id           country    region   subtype       name           division_id
0  085718963fffff...   US       US-CA    county    San Francisco  085718963fffff...

In most cases, wkls resolves to a single administrative boundary. But if there are name collisions (e.g., both a county and a locality called “San Francisco”), multiple rows may be returned.

By default, geometry methods like .wkt() will use the first matching row.

Helper methods

The following methods return Pandas DataFrames for easy exploration:

Method	Description
wkls.countries()	List all countries
wkls.us.regions()	List regions in the US
wkls.us.ca.counties()	List counties in California
wkls.us.ca.cities()	List cities in California
wkls.subtypes()	Show all distinct division subtypes

Dataset information

You can check which version of the Overture Maps dataset is being used:

print(wkls.overture_version())  

> "2025-09-24.0"

Note: The overture_version() method is only available at the root level, not on chained objects like wkls.us.overture_version().

How It Works

wkls works in two stages:

1. In-memory GERS ID resolution

Your chained attributes — up to 3 levels — are parsed in this order:

1. country → matched by ISO 2-letter code (e.g. "us")
2. region → matched using region ISO code suffix (e.g. "ca" → "US-CA")
3. place → fuzzy-matched against names in subtypes: county, locality, or neighborhood

This resolves to a Pandas DataFrame containing one or more rows from the in-memory wkls metadata table. At this stage, no geometry is loaded yet — only metadata (like id, name, region, subtype, etc.).

2. Geometry lookup using DuckDB

The geometry lookup is triggered only when you call one of the geometry methods:

• .wkt()
• .wkb()
• .hexwkb()
• .geojson()
• .svg()

At that point, wkls uses the previously resolved GERS ID to query the Overture division_area GeoParquet directly from S3.

The current Overture Maps dataset version can be checked with wkls.overture_version().

Contributing

We welcome contributions! Please see our Contributing Guide for details on how to get started, development setup, and submission guidelines.

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 - see the LICENSE file for details.

Acknowledgments

• Overture Maps Foundation for providing high-quality, open geospatial data.
• DuckDB for fast analytical queries with spatial support.
• AWS Open Data Registry for hosting the dataset.