README

Hello, this project doesn't do much.  It's just here to simplify getting setup with MongoDB and PostGIS.  I'm playing with both of these, trying to determine which suits my Geo-needs better and thought that others could benefit from my learnings.

	-Chris

(You need to have VirtualBox installed on your machine. That should be the only prerequisite.)

From the project directory, type "vagrant up"
(Wait at least 10 min, longer if it's the first build.  Vagrant is downloading an Ubuntu image and all of the dependencies defined in the puppet manifest)
When it finishes, type "vagrant ssh"
(You are now in the virtual machine)
Type "cd /vagrant"
(You are now in the shared project directory)


How to query points within shapes in Mongo
First, type mongo.
Then try the following:
 db.points.insert({ pos : [10,10] })
 db.points.insert({ pos : [1,1] })
 db.points.ensureIndex({ pos : "2d" })
 box = [[0,0],[2,2]]
 db.points.find({"pos": {"$within":{"$box": box}}})
 polygon = [[0,0],[0,1],[0,2],[2,2],[2,0]]
 db.points.find({"pos": {"$within":{"$polygon": polygon}}})

This converts a .shp file to GeoJSON (may be useful for working with MongoDB)
ogr2ogr -f "GeoJSON" census_tracts.json tl_2010_01_tract10.shp


PostGIS
Verify that PostGIS successfully installed 
(The restart is annoying.  Will fix later)
 sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql-8.4 restart
 psql -Uopengeo -p5432 -c"SELECT postgis_full_version();" medford
(You should see stuff that looks like Postgres is running and that it knows something about medford)

Create a GEO database to receive converted Shapefile
 createdb -Uopengeo -T template_postgis census

Convert shapefile (directory) into PostGIS SQL and insert into PostGIS
 shp2pgsql sample-shapefiles/alabama/tl_2010_01_tract10 census | psql -Uopengeo -d census

Example Spatial Query
select ST_Area(ST_GeographyFromText(ST_AsText(the_geom)), true) as area_of_census_tract, gid, namelsad10, aland10, awater10, intptlat10, intptlon10 from census limit 1;