oe_get: Find, download, translate and read OSM extracts from several...

In osmextract: Download and Import Open Street Map Data Extracts

Find, download, translate and read OSM extracts from several providers

Description

This function is used to find, download, translate, and read OSM extracts obtained from several providers. It is a wrapper around oe_match() and oe_read(). Check the introductory vignette, the examples, and the help pages of the wrapped functions to understand the details behind all parameters.

Usage

oe_get(
  place,
  layer = "lines",
  ...,
  provider = "geofabrik",
  match_by = "name",
  max_string_dist = 1,
  level = NULL,
  version = "latest",
  download_directory = oe_download_directory(),
  force_download = FALSE,
  max_file_size = 5e+08,
  vectortranslate_options = NULL,
  osmconf_ini = NULL,
  extra_tags = NULL,
  force_vectortranslate = FALSE,
  boundary = NULL,
  boundary_type = c("spat", "clipsrc"),
  download_only = FALSE,
  skip_vectortranslate = FALSE,
  never_skip_vectortranslate = FALSE,
  quiet = FALSE
)

Arguments

place	Description of the geographical area that should be matched with a .osm.pbf file. Can be either a length-1 character vector, an sf/sfc/bbox object with any CRS, or a numeric vector of coordinates with length 2. In the last case, it is assumed that the EPSG code is 4326 specified as c(LON, LAT), while you can use any CRS with sf/sfc/bbox objects. See Details and Examples in oe_match().
layer	Which layer should be read in? Typically points, lines (the default), multilinestrings, multipolygons or other_relations. If you specify an ad-hoc query using the argument query (see introductory vignette and examples), then oe_get() and oe_read() will read the layer specified in the query and ignore layer argument. See also #122.
...	(Named) arguments that will be passed to sf::st_read(), like query, wkt_filter or stringsAsFactors. Check the introductory vignette to understand how to create your own (SQL-like) queries.
provider	Which provider should be used to download the data? Available providers can be browsed with oe_providers(). For oe_get() and oe_match(), if place is equal to ⁠ITS Leeds⁠, then provider is internally set equal to "test". This is just for simple examples and internal tests.
match_by	Which column of the provider's database should be used for matching the input place with a .osm.pbf file? The default is "name". Check Details and Examples in oe_match() to understand how this parameter works. Ignored when place is not a character vector since, in that case, the matching is performed through a spatial operation.
max_string_dist	Numerical value greater or equal than 0. What is the maximum distance in fuzzy matching (i.e. Approximate String Distance, see adist()) between input place and match_by column that can be tolerated before testing alternative providers or looking for geographical matching with Nominatim API? This parameter is set equal to 0 if match_by is equal to iso3166_1_alpha2 or iso3166_2. Check Details and Examples in oe_match() to understand why this parameter is important. Ignored when place is not a character vector since, in that case, the matching is performed through a spatial operation.
level	An integer representing the desired hierarchical level in case of spatial matching. For the geofabrik provider, for example, 1 corresponds with continent-level datasets, 2 for countries, 3 corresponds to regions and 4 to subregions. Hence, we could approximately say that smaller administrative units correspond to bigger levels. If NULL, the default, the ⁠oe_*⁠ functions will select the highest available level. See Details and Examples in oe_match().
version	The version of the OSM extract to download. The default is "latest". Other possible values are typically specified using the format YYMMDD (e.g. "200101"). The complete list of all available historic files for a given extract can be browsed from the Geofabrik website (e.g. https://download.geofabrik.de/europe/italy.html and then click on 'raw directory index'). Note: the geographical coverage of an extract may change over time. For example, recent (2021+) extracts for Barcelona are at the regional level (cataluna), while older (2012-2021) extracts are at the national level (spain). This means that downloading historical data for a place like Barcelona may require changing the place argument to "spain" for older versions.
download_directory	Directory to store the file containing OSM data?.
force_download	Should the .osm.pbf file be updated even if it has already been downloaded? FALSE by default. This parameter is used to update old .osm.pbf files.
max_file_size	The maximum file size to download without asking in interactive mode. Default: 5e+8, half a gigabyte.
vectortranslate_options	Options passed to the sf::gdal_utils() argument options. Set by default. Check details in the introductory vignette and the help page of oe_vectortranslate().
osmconf_ini	The configuration file. See documentation at gdal.org. Check details in the introductory vignette and the help page of oe_vectortranslate(). Set by default.
extra_tags	Which additional columns, corresponding to OSM tags, should be in the resulting dataset? NULL by default. Check the introductory vignette and the help pages of oe_vectortranslate() and oe_get_keys(). Ignored when osmconf_ini is not NULL.
force_vectortranslate	Boolean. Force the original .pbf file to be translated into a .gpkg file, even if a .gpkg with the same name already exists? FALSE by default. If tags in extra_tags match data in previously translated .gpkg files no translation occurs (see #173 for details). Check the introductory vignette and the help page of oe_vectortranslate().
boundary	An sf/sfc/bbox object that will be used to create a spatial filter during the vectortranslate operations. If you are running oe_get() and place is an sf/sfc polygon or a bbox, then it will be used as boundary if the latter is not specified. Set boundary = NA to override this behaviour and forcefully import the full extract.
boundary_type	A character vector of length 1 specifying the type of spatial filter. The spat filter selects only those features that intersect a given area, while clipsrc also clips the geometries. Check the examples and also here for more details.
download_only	Boolean. If TRUE, then the function only returns the path where the matched file is stored, instead of reading it. FALSE by default.
skip_vectortranslate	Boolean. If TRUE, then the function skips all vectortranslate operations and it reads (or simply returns the path) of the .osm.pbf file. FALSE by default.
never_skip_vectortranslate	Boolean. This is used in case the user passed its own .ini file or vectortranslate options (since, in those case, it's too difficult to determine if an existing .gpkg file was generated following the same options.)
quiet	Boolean. If FALSE, the function prints informative messages. Starting from sf version 0.9.6, if quiet is equal to FALSE, then vectortranslate operations will display a progress bar.

Details

The algorithm that we use for importing an OSM extract data into R is divided into 4 steps:

1. match the input place with the url of a .pbf file;

2. download the .pbf file;

3. convert it into .gpkg format;

4. read-in the .gpkg file.

The function oe_match() is used to perform the first operation and the function oe_read() (which is a wrapper around oe_download(), oe_vectortranslate() and sf::st_read()) performs the other three operations.

Value

An sf object.

See Also

oe_match(), oe_download(), oe_vectortranslate(), and oe_read().

Examples

# Copy ITS file to tempdir so that the examples do not require internet
# connection. You can skip the next 4 lines when running the examples
# locally.

its_pbf = file.path(tempdir(), "test_its-example.osm.pbf")
file.copy(
  from = system.file("its-example.osm.pbf", package = "osmextract"),
  to = its_pbf,
  overwrite = TRUE
)

# Match, download (not really) and convert OSM extracts associated to a simple test.
its = oe_get("ITS Leeds", download_directory = tempdir())
class(its)
unique(sf::st_geometry_type(its))

# Get another layer from ITS Leeds extract
its_points = oe_get("ITS Leeds", layer = "points", download_directory = tempdir())
unique(sf::st_geometry_type(its_points))

# Get the .osm.pbf and .gpkg files paths
oe_get(
  "ITS Leeds", download_only = TRUE, quiet = TRUE,
  download_directory = tempdir()
)
oe_get(
  "ITS Leeds", download_only = TRUE, skip_vectortranslate = TRUE,
  quiet = TRUE, download_directory = tempdir()
)
# See also ?oe_find()

# Add additional tags
its_with_oneway = oe_get(
  "ITS Leeds", extra_tags = "oneway",
  download_directory = tempdir()
)
names(its_with_oneway)
table(its_with_oneway$oneway, useNA = "ifany")

# Use the query argument to get only oneway streets:
q = "SELECT * FROM 'lines' WHERE oneway == 'yes'"
its_oneway = oe_get("ITS Leeds", query = q, download_directory = tempdir())
its_oneway[, c(1, 3, 9)]

# Apply a spatial filter during the vectortranslate operations
its_poly = sf::st_sfc(
  sf::st_polygon(
    list(rbind(
      c(-1.55577, 53.80850),
      c(-1.55787, 53.80926),
      c(-1.56096, 53.80891),
      c(-1.56096, 53.80736),
      c(-1.55675, 53.80658),
      c(-1.55495, 53.80749),
      c(-1.55577, 53.80850)
    ))
  ),
  crs = 4326
)
its_spat = oe_get("ITS Leeds", boundary = its_poly, download_directory = tempdir())
its_clipped = oe_get(
  "ITS Leeds", boundary = its_poly, boundary_type = "clipsrc",
  quiet = TRUE, download_directory = tempdir()
)

plot(sf::st_geometry(its), reset = FALSE, col = "lightgrey")
plot(sf::st_boundary(its_poly), col = "black", add = TRUE, lty = 2)
plot(sf::st_boundary(sf::st_as_sfc(sf::st_bbox(its_poly))), col = "black", add = TRUE)
plot(sf::st_geometry(its_spat), add = TRUE, col = "darkred")
plot(sf::st_geometry(its_clipped), add = TRUE, col = "orange")

# More complex examples
## Not run: 
west_yorkshire = oe_get("West Yorkshire")
# If you run it again, the function will not download the file
# or convert it again
west_yorkshire = oe_get("West Yorkshire")
# Match with place name
oe_get("Milan") # Warning: the .pbf file is 400MB
oe_get("Vatican City") # Check all providers
oe_get("Zurich") # Uses Nominatim API for geolocating places

# Match with coordinates (any EPSG)
milan_duomo = sf::st_sfc(sf::st_point(c(1514924, 5034552)), crs = 3003)
oe_get(milan_duomo, quiet = FALSE) # Warning: the .pbf file is 400MB
# Match with numeric coordinates (EPSG = 4326)
oe_match(c(9.1916, 45.4650), quiet = FALSE)

# Check also alternative providers
baku = oe_get(place = "Baku")

# Other examples:
oe_get("RU", match_by = "iso3166_1_alpha2", quiet = FALSE)
# The following example mimics read_sf
oe_get("Andora", stringsAsFactors = FALSE, quiet = TRUE, as_tibble = TRUE)
## End(Not run)

# Remove .pbf and .gpkg files in tempdir
oe_clean(tempdir())

osmextract documentation built on April 14, 2026, 9:06 a.m.