What is the structure of a multipoint shapefile dbf file?

AntonSawka — Sat, 19 Dec 2015 18:37:34 GMT

I'm writing a program to create a multipoint shapefile (.shp .shx .dbf), and I'm not sure how the format of the .dbf file should look. The .dbf starts off with a record header, followed by field subrecord structures, which are then followed by the actual records. The records start with a deletion flag followed by data.

With the consideration that this is a multipoint shapefile, how would the records be written? Is each point in the multipoint file a record or are all of the points considered to be one record?

Re: What is the structure of a multipoint shapefile dbf file?

DanPatterson_Retired — Sat, 19 Dec 2015 18:50:28 GMT

the shapefile specification is here https://www.esri.com/library/whitepapers/pdfs/shapefile.pdf

the shape field will contain the multipoint geometry to which one attribute in the dbase file is associated, hence, the multipoint designation, multiple points to one attribute

There are numerous threads on dbase format on the web dbase IV I think is the one being used, so you might query those as well... for example... http://www.dbase.com/KnowledgeBase/int/db7_file_fmt.htm

rather than reinvent the wheel, you might want to look at some packages that do it already ... ie for python pyshp 1.2.3 : Python Package Index

And there are builtins that can be used within arcpy to generate multipoints and export attributes out to shapefile format if you need. those

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What is the structure of a multipoint shapefile dbf file?

Re: What is the structure of a multipoint shapefile dbf file?