Installing PostGIS¶

Creating a spatial database with PostGIS 2.0 and PostgreSQL 9.1+¶

PostGIS 2 includes an extension for Postgres 9.1+ that can be used to enable spatial functionality:

$ createdb  <db name>
$ psql <db name>
> CREATE EXTENSION postgis;
> CREATE EXTENSION postgis_topology;

No PostGIS topology functionalities are yet available from GeoDjango, so the creation of the postgis_topology extension is entirely optional.

Creating a spatial database template for earlier versions¶

If you have an earlier version of PostGIS or PostgreSQL, the CREATE EXTENSION isn’t available and you need to create the spatial database using the following instructions.

Creating a spatial database with PostGIS is different than normal because additional SQL must be loaded to enable spatial functionality. Because of the steps in this process, it’s better to create a database template that can be reused later.

First, you need to be able to execute the commands as a privileged database user. For example, you can use the following to become the postgres user:

$ sudo su - postgres

Once you’re a database super user, then you may execute the following commands to create a PostGIS spatial database template:

$ POSTGIS_SQL_PATH=`pg_config --sharedir`/contrib/postgis-2.0
# Creating the template spatial database.
$ createdb -E UTF8 template_postgis
$ createlang -d template_postgis plpgsql # Adding PLPGSQL language support.
# Allows non-superusers the ability to create from this template
$ psql -d postgres -c "UPDATE pg_database SET datistemplate='true' WHERE datname='template_postgis';"
# Loading the PostGIS SQL routines
$ psql -d template_postgis -f $POSTGIS_SQL_PATH/postgis.sql
$ psql -d template_postgis -f $POSTGIS_SQL_PATH/spatial_ref_sys.sql
# Enabling users to alter spatial tables.
$ psql -d template_postgis -c "GRANT ALL ON geometry_columns TO PUBLIC;"
$ psql -d template_postgis -c "GRANT ALL ON geography_columns TO PUBLIC;"
$ psql -d template_postgis -c "GRANT ALL ON spatial_ref_sys TO PUBLIC;"

These commands may be placed in a shell script for later use; for convenience the following scripts are available:

Afterwards, you may create a spatial database by simply specifying template_postgis as the template to use (via the -T option):

$ createdb -T template_postgis <db name>

$ createuser --createdb <user>

PostgreSQL’s createdb fails¶

When the PostgreSQL cluster uses a non-UTF8 encoding, the create_template_postgis-*.sh script will fail when executing createdb:

createdb: database creation failed: ERROR:  new encoding (UTF8) is incompatible
  with the encoding of the template database (SQL_ASCII)

The current workaround is to re-create the cluster using UTF8 (back up any databases before dropping the cluster).

Managing the database¶

To administer the database, you can either use the pgAdmin III program (Start ‣ PostgreSQL 9.x ‣ pgAdmin III) or the SQL Shell (Start ‣ PostgreSQL 9.x ‣ SQL Shell). For example, to create a geodjango spatial database and user, the following may be executed from the SQL Shell as the postgres user:

postgres# CREATE USER geodjango PASSWORD 'my_passwd';
postgres# CREATE DATABASE geodjango OWNER geodjango TEMPLATE template_postgis ENCODING 'utf8';