ddbs_read_meta: Read metadata from a spatial file

In duckspatial: R Interface to 'DuckDB' Database with Spatial Extension

Read metadata from a spatial file

Description

Retrieves file-level metadata from a spatial vector file (e.g. GeoPackage, Shapefile, GeoJSON) using DuckDB's ST_Read_Meta() function. Returns information about the file's driver and its layers as a tibble.

Usage

ddbs_read_meta(path, conn = NULL)

Arguments

path	character, path to the spatial file to inspect.
conn	A DBIConnection object to a DuckDB database

Value

A tibble with one row per file and the following columns:

file_name

Path to the file.

driver_short_name

Short name of the GDAL driver (e.g. "GPKG").

driver_long_name

Full name of the GDAL driver (e.g. "GeoPackage").

layers

A list-column of data frames, one per file, each describing the layers contained in the file. Unnest with unnest to access individual layer attributes such as name, geometry type, and feature count.

Examples

## Not run: 
## Read metadata from a GeoPackage
meta <- ddbs_read_meta(
  system.file("spatial/rivers.geojson",
  package = "duckspatial")
)

## View file-level metadata
meta

## Inspect layer details
tidyr::unnest(meta, layers)

## End(Not run)

duckspatial documentation built on June 22, 2026, 9:08 a.m.