shaperead - Read vector features and attributes from shapefile

Syntax

S = shaperead(filename) S = shaperead(filename, Name,Value, ...) [S, A] = shaperead(...)

Description

S = shaperead(filename) reads in a shapefile, filename, and returns an N-by-1 geographic data structure array in projected map coordinates (a mapstruct). The geographic data structure combines geometric and feature attribute information. shaperead supports the ordinary 2-D shape types: 'Point', 'Multipoint', 'PolyLine', and 'Polygon'.

S = shaperead(filename, Name,Value, ...) returns a subset of the shapefile contents in S, as determined by the parameters. The geographic data structure, S, is a mapstruct unless UseGeoCoords is true. If you do not specify any parameters, shaperead returns an entry for every non-null feature and creates a field for every attribute.

[S, A] = shaperead(...) returns an N-by-1 geographic data structure array, S, containing geometric information, and a parallel N-by-1 attribute structure array, A, containing feature attribute information.

Input Arguments

filename

Refers to the base name or full name of one of the component files in a shapefile. If the main file (with extension .shp) is missing, shaperead throws an error. If either of the other files is missing, shaperead issues a warning.

Make sure that your machine is set to the same character encoding scheme as the data you are importing. For example, if you are trying to import a shapefile that contains Japanese characters, configure your machine to support the Shift-JIS encoding scheme.

Name-Value Pair Arguments

Specify optional comma-separated pairs of Name,Value arguments, where Name is the argument name and Value is the corresponding value. Name must appear inside single quotes (' '). You can specify several name and value pair arguments in any order as Name1,Value1,...,NameN,ValueN.

`'RecordNumbers'`	Integer-valued vector of class `double`. Use the parameter `RecordNumbers` to import only features with listed record numbers. Use the parameters `RecordNumbers`, `BoundingBox`, and `Selector` to select which features to read. If you use more than one of these parameters in the same call, you receive the intersection of the records that match the individual specifications. For instance, if you specify values for both `RecordNumbers` and `BoundingBox`, you import only those features with record numbers that appear in your list and that also have bounding boxes intersecting the specified bounding box.
`'BoundingBox'`	2-by-2 array of class `double`. Use the parameter `BoundingBox` to import only features whose bounding boxes intersect the specified box. The `shaperead` function does not trim features that partially intersect the box.
`'Selector'`	Cell array containing a function handle and one or more attribute names. (The function must return a `logical` scalar.) Use the `Selector` parameter to import only features for which the function, when applied to the corresponding attribute values, returns `true`.
`'Attributes'`	Cell array of attribute names. Use the parameter `Attributes` to include listed attributes and set the order of attributes in the structure array. Use `{}` to omit all attributes.
`'UseGeoCoords'`	`Logical` scalar that specifies returning shapefile contents in a geostruct, if set to `true`. Use this parameter when you know that the x- and y- coordinates in the shapefile actually represent longitude and latitude data. (If you do not know whether you are working with geographic or map coordinates, see Mapstructs and Geostructs in the User's Guide.) Default: `false`

Output Arguments

`S`	An N-by-1 geographic data structure array containing an element for each non-null, spatial feature in the shapefile.
`A`	An N-by-1 attribute structure array, `A`, parallel to array `S`.

The fields in the output structure arrays S and A depend on (1) the type of shape contained in the file and (2) the names and types of attributes included in the file. The shaperead function supports the following four attribute types: numeric and floating (stored as type double in MATLAB) and character and date (stored as char array).