pgRouting Concepts¶

Create a routing Database¶

The first thing we need to do is create a database and load pgrouting in the database. Typically you will create a database for each project. Once you have a database to work in, your can load your data and build your application in that database. This makes it easy to move your project later if you want to to say a production server.

For Postgresql 9.2 and later versions

createdb mydatabase
psql mydatabase -c "create extension postgis"
psql mydatabase -c "create extension pgrouting"

Load Data¶

How you load your data will depend in what form it comes it. There are various OpenSource tools that can help you, like:

So these tools and probably others will allow you to read vector data so that you may then load that data into your database as a table of some kind. At this point you need to know a little about your data structure and content. One easy way to browse your new data table is with pgAdmin3 or phpPgAdmin.

Build a Routing Topology¶

Next we need to build a topology for our street data. What this means is that for any given edge in your street data the ends of that edge will be connected to a unique node and to other edges that are also connected to that same unique node. Once all the edges are connected to nodes we have a graph that can be used for routing with pgrouting. We provide a tool that will help with this:

select pgr_createTopology('myroads', 0.000001);

• pgr_createTopology

Check the Routing Topology¶

There are lots of possible sources for errors in a graph. The data that you started with may not have been designed with routing in mind. A graph has some very specific requirements. One is that it is NODED, this means that except for some very specific use cases, each road segment starts and ends at a node and that in general is does not cross another road segment that it should be connected to.

There can be other errors like the direction of a one-way street being entered in the wrong direction. We do not have tools to search for all possible errors but we have some basic tools that might help.

select pgr_analyzegraph('myroads', 0.000001);
select pgr_analyzeoneway('myroads',  s_in_rules, s_out_rules,
                                     t_in_rules, t_out_rules
                                     direction)
select pgr_nodeNetwork('myroads', 0.001);

• pgr_analyzeGraph
• pgr_analyzeOneway
• pgr_nodeNetwork

Compute a Path¶

Once you have all the preparation work done above, computing a route is fairly easy. We have a lot of different algorithms that can work with your prepared road network. The general form of a route query is:

select pgr_dijkstra(`SELECT * FROM myroads', 1, 2)

As you can see this is fairly straight forward and you can look and the specific algorithms for the details of the signatures and how to use them. These results have information like edge id and/or the node id along with the cost or geometry for the step in the path from start to end. Using the ids you can join these result back to your edge table to get more information about each step in the path.

• pgr_dijkstra

Description of the edges_sql query for dijkstra like functions¶

Where:

Description of the edges_sql query (id is not necessary)¶

Where:

Description of the edges_sql query for astar like functions¶

Where:

Description of the edges_sql query for Max-flow like functions¶

Where:

Description of the Points SQL query¶

Where:

Description of the return values for a path¶

Returns set of (seq, path_seq [, start_vid] [, end_vid], node, edge, cost, agg_cost)

Description of the return values for a Cost function¶

Returns set of (start_vid, end_vid, agg_cost)

Description of the Return Values¶

Routing Topology¶

Overview

Typically when GIS files are loaded into the data database for use with pgRouting they do not have topology information associated with them. To create a useful topology the data needs to be “noded”. This means that where two or more roads form an intersection there it needs to be a node at the intersection and all the road segments need to be broken at the intersection, assuming that you can navigate from any of these segments to any other segment via that intersection.

You can use the graph analysis functions to help you see where you might have topology problems in your data. If you need to node your data, we also have a function pgr_nodeNetwork() that might work for you. This function splits ALL crossing segments and nodes them. There are some cases where this might NOT be the right thing to do.

For example, when you have an overpass and underpass intersection, you do not want these noded, but pgr_nodeNetwork does not know that is the case and will node them which is not good because then the router will be able to turn off the overpass onto the underpass like it was a flat 2D intersection. To deal with this problem some data sets use z-levels at these types of intersections and other data might not node these intersection which would be ok.

For those cases where topology needs to be added the following functions may be useful. One way to prep the data for pgRouting is to add the following columns to your table and then populate them as appropriate. This example makes a lot of assumption like that you original data tables already has certain columns in it like one_way, fcc, and possibly others and that they contain specific data values. This is only to give you an idea of what you can do with your data.

ALTER TABLE edge_table
    ADD COLUMN source integer,
    ADD COLUMN target integer,
    ADD COLUMN cost_len double precision,
    ADD COLUMN cost_time double precision,
    ADD COLUMN rcost_len double precision,
    ADD COLUMN rcost_time double precision,
    ADD COLUMN x1 double precision,
    ADD COLUMN y1 double precision,
    ADD COLUMN x2 double precision,
    ADD COLUMN y2 double precision,
    ADD COLUMN to_cost double precision,
    ADD COLUMN rule text,
    ADD COLUMN isolated integer;

SELECT pgr_createTopology('edge_table', 0.000001, 'the_geom', 'id');

The function pgr_createTopology() will create the vertices_tmp table and populate the source and target columns. The following example populated the remaining columns. In this example, the fcc column contains feature class code and the CASE statements converts it to an average speed.

UPDATE edge_table SET x1 = st_x(st_startpoint(the_geom)),
                      y1 = st_y(st_startpoint(the_geom)),
                      x2 = st_x(st_endpoint(the_geom)),
                      y2 = st_y(st_endpoint(the_geom)),
  cost_len  = st_length_spheroid(the_geom, 'SPHEROID["WGS84",6378137,298.25728]'),
  rcost_len = st_length_spheroid(the_geom, 'SPHEROID["WGS84",6378137,298.25728]'),
  len_km = st_length_spheroid(the_geom, 'SPHEROID["WGS84",6378137,298.25728]')/1000.0,
  len_miles = st_length_spheroid(the_geom, 'SPHEROID["WGS84",6378137,298.25728]')
              / 1000.0 * 0.6213712,
  speed_mph = CASE WHEN fcc='A10' THEN 65
                   WHEN fcc='A15' THEN 65
                   WHEN fcc='A20' THEN 55
                   WHEN fcc='A25' THEN 55
                   WHEN fcc='A30' THEN 45
                   WHEN fcc='A35' THEN 45
                   WHEN fcc='A40' THEN 35
                   WHEN fcc='A45' THEN 35
                   WHEN fcc='A50' THEN 25
                   WHEN fcc='A60' THEN 25
                   WHEN fcc='A61' THEN 25
                   WHEN fcc='A62' THEN 25
                   WHEN fcc='A64' THEN 25
                   WHEN fcc='A70' THEN 15
                   WHEN fcc='A69' THEN 10
                   ELSE null END,
  speed_kmh = CASE WHEN fcc='A10' THEN 104
                   WHEN fcc='A15' THEN 104
                   WHEN fcc='A20' THEN 88
                   WHEN fcc='A25' THEN 88
                   WHEN fcc='A30' THEN 72
                   WHEN fcc='A35' THEN 72
                   WHEN fcc='A40' THEN 56
                   WHEN fcc='A45' THEN 56
                   WHEN fcc='A50' THEN 40
                   WHEN fcc='A60' THEN 50
                   WHEN fcc='A61' THEN 40
                   WHEN fcc='A62' THEN 40
                   WHEN fcc='A64' THEN 40
                   WHEN fcc='A70' THEN 25
                   WHEN fcc='A69' THEN 15
                   ELSE null END;

-- UPDATE the cost information based on oneway streets

UPDATE edge_table SET
    cost_time = CASE
        WHEN one_way='TF' THEN 10000.0
        ELSE cost_len/1000.0/speed_kmh::numeric*3600.0
        END,
    rcost_time = CASE
        WHEN one_way='FT' THEN 10000.0
        ELSE cost_len/1000.0/speed_kmh::numeric*3600.0
        END;

-- clean up the database because we have updated a lot of records

VACUUM ANALYZE VERBOSE edge_table;

Now your database should be ready to use any (most?) of the pgRouting algorithms.

Analyze a Graph¶

With pgr_analyzeGraph the graph can be checked for errors. For example for table “mytab” that has “mytab_vertices_pgr” as the vertices table:

SELECT pgr_analyzeGraph('mytab', 0.000002);
NOTICE:  Performing checks, pelase wait...
NOTICE:  Analyzing for dead ends. Please wait...
NOTICE:  Analyzing for gaps. Please wait...
NOTICE:  Analyzing for isolated edges. Please wait...
NOTICE:  Analyzing for ring geometries. Please wait...
NOTICE:  Analyzing for intersections. Please wait...
NOTICE:              ANALYSIS RESULTS FOR SELECTED EDGES:
NOTICE:                    Isolated segments: 158
NOTICE:                            Dead ends: 20028
NOTICE:  Potential gaps found near dead ends: 527
NOTICE:               Intersections detected: 2560
NOTICE:                      Ring geometries: 0
pgr_analyzeGraph
----------
   OK
(1 row)

In the vertices table “mytab_vertices_pgr”:

• Deadends are identified by cnt=1
• Potencial gap problems are identified with chk=1.

SELECT count(*) as deadends  FROM mytab_vertices_pgr WHERE cnt = 1;
deadends
----------
    20028
 (1 row)

SELECT count(*) as gaps  FROM mytab_vertices_pgr WHERE chk = 1;
 gaps
 -----
   527
 (1 row)

For isolated road segments, for example, a segment where both ends are deadends. you can find these with the following query:

SELECT *
    FROM mytab a, mytab_vertices_pgr b, mytab_vertices_pgr c
    WHERE a.source=b.id AND b.cnt=1 AND a.target=c.id AND c.cnt=1;

If you want to visualize these on a graphic image, then you can use something like mapserver to render the edges and the vertices and style based on cnt or if they are isolated, etc. You can also do this with a tool like graphviz, or geoserver or other similar tools.

Analyze One Way Streets¶

pgr_analyzeOneway analyzes one way streets in a graph and identifies any flipped segments. Basically if you count the edges coming into a node and the edges exiting a node the number has to be greater than one.

This query will add two columns to the vertices_tmp table ein int and eout int and populate it with the appropriate counts. After running this on a graph you can identify nodes with potential problems with the following query.

The rules are defined as an array of text strings that if match the col value would be counted as true for the source or target in or out condition.

Example¶

Lets assume we have a table “st” of edges and a column “one_way” that might have values like:

• ‘FT’ - oneway from the source to the target node.
• ‘TF’ - oneway from the target to the source node.
• ‘B’ - two way street.
• ‘’ - empty field, assume twoway.
• <NULL> - NULL field, use two_way_if_null flag.

Then we could form the following query to analyze the oneway streets for errors.

SELECT pgr_analyzeOneway('mytab',
            ARRAY['', 'B', 'TF'],
            ARRAY['', 'B', 'FT'],
            ARRAY['', 'B', 'FT'],
            ARRAY['', 'B', 'TF'],
            );

-- now we can see the problem nodes
SELECT * FROM mytab_vertices_pgr WHERE ein=0 OR eout=0;

-- and the problem edges connected to those nodes
SELECT gid FROM mytab a, mytab_vertices_pgr b WHERE a.source=b.id AND ein=0 OR eout=0
UNION
SELECT gid FROM mytab a, mytab_vertices_pgr b WHERE a.target=b.id AND ein=0 OR eout=0;

Typically these problems are generated by a break in the network, the one way direction set wrong, maybe an error related to z-levels or a network that is not properly noded.

The above tools do not detect all network issues, but they will identify some common problems. There are other problems that are hard to detect because they are more global in nature like multiple disconnected networks. Think of an island with a road network that is not connected to the mainland network because the bridge or ferry routes are missing.

For the Routing functions¶

To get faster results bound your queries to the area of interest of routing to have, for example, no more than one million rows.

Use an inner query SQL that does not include some edges in the routing function

SELECT id, source, target from edge_table WHERE
        id < 17 and
        the_geom  && (select st_buffer(the_geom,1) as myarea FROM  edge_table where id = 5)

Integrating the inner query to the pgRouting function:

SELECT * FROM pgr_dijkstra(
        'SELECT id, source, target from edge_table WHERE
            id < 17 and
            the_geom  && (select st_buffer(the_geom,1) as myarea FROM  edge_table where id = 5)',
    1, 2)

For the topology functions:¶

When “you know” that you are going to remove a set of edges from the edges table, and without those edges you are going to use a routing function you can do the following:

Analize the new topology based on the actual topology:

pgr_analyzegraph('edge_table',rows_where:='id < 17');

Or create a new topology if the change is permanent:

pgr_createTopology('edge_table',rows_where:='id < 17');
pgr_analyzegraph('edge_table',rows_where:='id < 17');