[GRASS5] GRASS5.7: trouble converting shapefile to postgis with v.convert

[Moritz Lennert]

Radim Blazek said:
> On Thursday 04 December 2003 19:17, Moritz Lennert wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I have a shapefile registered in GRASS5.7:
>>
>> *******
>> GRASS 5.7.-cvs:~ > g.list vect
>> ----------------------------------------------
>> vector files available in mapset mlennert:
>> communes.shp
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------
>> ************
>>
>> I can display and query this file without any problems.
>>
>> It is connected to a dbf file:
>>
>> *************
>> GRASS 5.7.-cvs:~ > v.db.connect -p communes.shp
>> Vector map <communes.shp> is connected by:
>> field <1> table <communes> in database </home>
>> through driver <shp> with key <shp_fid>
>> **************
>>
>> Following the tutorial, I tried to store this map in PostGIS format:
>>
>> *************
>> GRASS 5.7.-cvs:~ > v.database driver=pg database="dbname=digit_belgium"
>> GRASS 5.7.-cvs:~ > v.convert input=communes.shp output=communes
>> *************
>>
>> but I got the error message: "ERROR: Input vector was not found."
>>
>> What am I doing wrong ?
>
> v.convert converts old GRASS vector files (GRASS 4.0,5.0) to 5.1/7 format.
> v.database is used to set the database for attributes.
> If you want to write a vector in PostGIS format, you have first set
> the output vector format to PostGIS either in
> v.format -> output format -> PostGIS
> or by g.gisenv:
> g.gisenv store=mapset set=GV_FORMAT=POSTGIS
> g.gisenv store=mapset
> set=GV_PGIS_DATABASE=host=liptakov,dbname=cimrman,user=jara
>
> Once you set vector format to PostGIS, all new vectors are written to the
> database.
> Attributes are by default written to dbf files, so until you set also
> v.database driver=pg database="dbname=digit_belgium"
> you get geometry in Postgres and attributes in dbf, isn't it funny?


I did all these steps, just following the tutorial, but the problem was
the usage of v.convert. May I conclude that the description in the
tutorial at
http://grass.itc.it/grass51/tutorial/geom_storage.html#PostGRASS is wrong
then ?

> To convert the vector you can run g.copy for example, but that is not what
> you want
> as communes will be polygons and you have to clean such vector first.
> I would recommend v.in.ogr as it does all the cleaning. See the statistics
> about
> areas at the end.
>

So you would recommend this rather than just using the shp2pgsql program
that comes with postgis ?

Moritz