Final?: ST_Buffer on Geography, or My love for @NullIsland

Thanks to Paul Norman’s reminder in a previous post, we now have all the pieces we need to complete an ST_Buffer function that exposes all the wonderful goodness of buffer style parameters to geography users and also chooses the best local coordinate system automatically.

We use _ST_BestSRID to choose our local coordinate system.

Remember my previous three disadvantages:

1. It didn’t do this at a low enough level to automatically use the best available local coordinate system. This leaves it to the user to choose the best available local coordinate system
2. It used a different function name than you otherwise use for buffering.
3. Finally, it wouldn’t let you use all the other parameters that ST_Buffer exposes through the use of buffer style parameters.

They are now all solved.

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION ST_Buffer(g1 geography, radius_of_buffer float,
num_seg_quarter_circle integer)
RETURNS geography AS
$BODY$

WITH transformed AS (
SELECT ST_Transform(g1::geometry, _ST_BestSRID(g1)) AS geom
),
buffered AS (
SELECT ST_Buffer(geom, radius_of_buffer, num_seg_quarter_circle) AS geom
FROM transformed
),
transformed_4326 AS (
SELECT ST_Transform(geom, 4326) AS geom FROM buffered
)
SELECT geom::geography FROM transformed_4326

$BODY$
LANGUAGE sql VOLATILE;

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION ST_Buffer(g1 geography, radius_of_buffer float,
buffer_style_parameters text)
RETURNS geography AS
$BODY$

WITH transformed AS (
SELECT ST_Transform(g1::geometry, _ST_BestSRID(g1)) AS geom
),
buffered AS (
SELECT ST_Buffer(geom, radius_of_buffer, buffer_style_parameters) AS geom
FROM transformed
),
transformed_4326 AS (
SELECT ST_Transform(geom, 4326) AS geom FROM buffered
)
SELECT geom::geography FROM transformed_4326

$BODY$
LANGUAGE sql VOLATILE;

Let’s try this!

SELECT ST_Buffer(
ST_GeomFromText(
'LINESTRING(5 2.5,0 -2.50,-5 2.5)'
)::geography, 500000, 'join=mitre');

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Heart shaped buffer over Null Island.

Map tiles by Stamen Design, under CC BY 3.0. Data by OpenStreetMap, under ODbL.

(poor editing earlier tonight. My apologies.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.