A package that provides simple features access for R. Package sf:

• represents natively in R all 17 simple feature types for all dimensions (XY, XYZ, XYM, XYZM)
• uses S3 classes: simple features are data.frame objects (or tibbles) that have a geometry list-column
• interfaces to GEOS to support the DE9-IM
• interfaces to GDAL with driver dependent dataset or layer creation options, Date and DateTime (POSIXct) columns, and coordinate reference system transformations through PROJ.4
• provides fast I/O with GDAL and GEOS using well-known-binary written in C++/Rcpp
• directly reads from and writes to spatial databases such as PostGIS using DBI

See also:

• package vignettes: first, second, third
• blog posts: first, second, third, fourth
• the original R Consortium ISC proposal, the R Consortium blog post
• UseR! 2016 presentation

Install either from CRAN with:

install.packages("sf")

this will install binary packages on Windows and MacOS, unless you configured R such that it tries to install source packages; in that case, see below.

Install development versions from github with

library(devtools)
install_github("r-spatial/sf")

Installing sf from source works under windows when Rtools is installed. This downloads the system requirements from rwinlib. (This does not include liblwgeom; it will need to be installed separately for functions that require it, such as st_make_valid, to work.)

One way to install the dependencies is using sudo; the other is using homebrew. For the latter, see e.g. here. Homebrew commands might be:

brew unlink gdal
brew tap osgeo/osgeo4mac && brew tap --repair
brew install proj
brew install geos
brew install udunits
brew install gdal2 --with-armadillo --with-complete --with-libkml --with-unsupported
brew link --force gdal2

after that, you should be able to install sf as a source package.

According to r-spatial#349, brew install postgis installs a working liblwgeom. In case of problems, search the issues for brew before opening a new one.

For MacOS Sierra, see these instruction, using kyngchaos frameworks.

For Unix-alikes, GDAL (>= 2.0.0), GEOS (>= 3.3.0) and Proj.4 (>= 4.8.0) are required; liblwgeom is optional.

To install the dependencies on Ubuntu, either add ubuntugis-unstable to the package repositories:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntugis/ubuntugis-unstable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libgdal-dev libgeos-dev libproj-dev libudunits2-dev liblwgeom-dev

or install dependencies from source; see e.g. an older travis config file for hints.

The following command installs all required dependencies:

sudo dnf install gdal-devel proj-devel proj-epsg proj-nad geos-devel udunits2-devel

To install on Debian, the rocker geospatial Dockerfiles may be helpful. Ubuntu Dockerfiles are found here.

• Contributions of all sorts are most welcome, issues and pull requests are the preferred ways of sharing them.
• When contributing pull requests, please adhere to the package style (in package code use = rather than <-; don't change indentation; tab stops of 4 spaces are preferred)
• This project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By participating in this project you agree to abide by its terms.

This project has been realized with financial support from the