WKT

Overview

This is a non-validating WKT (Well-know text) parser for Erlang. It is meant for fast parsing and parses only valid WKT and all other strings that seem to be valid, but are not. The grammar is simplified to (in EBNF as used for the XML spec):

wkt ::= item | string  '(' space* item (comma item)* ')'
item ::= string (geom | list | nested_list | item | 'EMPTY')
nested_list ::= space* '(' list (comma list)* ')' | '(' nested_list+ ')'
list ::= '(' geom (comma geom)* ')'
geom ::= space* '(' coord (comma coord)* ')'
coord ::= space* number (space+ number)*
number ::= integer | float
integer ::=  ('-' | '+')? [0-9]+
float ::= ('-' | '+')? [0-9]+ '.' [0-9]+ exponent?
exponent = 'E' ('-' | '+')? [0-9]+
string ::= [a-zA-Z]+ (space* [a-zA-Z])*
space :== #x20
comma :== ',' space*

This means also strings like this(is(10 20), a test EMPTY) would be parsed to:

{this,[{is,[{10,20}]},{'a test',[]}]}

A validating parser would be much slower as it would also need to perform checks on the geometry, e.g. for polygons whether interiors are really within the exterior ring or not.

The general rule is, a list of coordinates is transformed to a list, a list of coordinates to a list. The geometry name will be an atom. Here's an example for a polygon:

wkt:parse("POLYGON ((102 103, 204 205, 306 107, 102 103), (12 13, 24 25, 36 17, 12 13), (62 63, 74 75, 86 67, 62 63))").
{Polygon,[[{102,103},{204,205},{306,107},{102,103}],
          [{12,13},{24,25},{36,17},{12,13}],
          [{62,63},{74,75},{86,67},{62,63}]]}

The atoms will be all lowercase for arbitrary strings, but camel cased for the geometries that are also known from the GeoJSON specification (where the case matters). Those are:

• Point
• MultiPoint
• LineString
• MultiLineString
• Polygon
• MultiPolygon
• GeometryCollection

Compilation

./rebar compile

Running the tests

Running the EUnit tests is simple as:

./rebar eunit

License

The code is released under the Apache License 2.0. Copyright 2010-2012, Volker Mische (http://vmx.cx/)