coerce-methods: Methods to coerce simple features to Spatial* and...

In sf: Simple Features for R

Methods to coerce simple features to ⁠Spatial*⁠ and Spatial*DataFrame objects

Description

as_Spatial() allows to convert sf and sfc to Spatial*DataFrame and ⁠Spatial*⁠ for sp compatibility. You can also use as(x, "Spatial") To transform sp objects to sf and sfc with as(x, "sf").

Usage

as_Spatial(from, cast = TRUE, IDs = paste0("ID", seq_along(from)))

Arguments

from	object of class sf, sfc_POINT, sfc_MULTIPOINT, sfc_LINESTRING, sfc_MULTILINESTRING, sfc_POLYGON, or sfc_MULTIPOLYGON.
cast	logical; if TRUE, st_cast() from before converting, so that e.g. GEOMETRY objects with a mix of POLYGON and MULTIPOLYGON are cast to MULTIPOLYGON.
IDs	character vector with IDs for the ⁠Spatial*⁠ geometries

Details

Package sp supports three dimensions for POINT and MULTIPOINT (⁠SpatialPoint*⁠). Other geometries must be two-dimensional (XY). Dimensions can be dropped using st_zm() with what = "M" or what = "ZM".

For converting simple features (i.e., sf objects) to their Spatial counterpart, use as(obj, "Spatial")

Value

geometry-only object deriving from Spatial, of the appropriate class

Examples

nc <- st_read(system.file("shape/nc.shp", package="sf"))
if (require(sp, quietly = TRUE)) {
# convert to SpatialPolygonsDataFrame
spdf <- as_Spatial(nc)
# identical to
spdf <- as(nc, "Spatial")
# convert to SpatialPolygons
as(st_geometry(nc), "Spatial")
# back to sf
as(spdf, "sf")
}

sf documentation built on June 8, 2025, 10:18 a.m.