Convert geometries to hexadecimal Well-Known Binary (HEXWKB) format

Converts spatial geometries to their hexadecimal Well-Known Binary (HEXWKB) representation. This function wraps DuckDB's ST_AsHEXWKB spatial function.

Usage

ddbs_as_hexwkb(x, conn = NULL, quiet = FALSE)

Arguments

x: An sf spatial object. Alternatively, it can be a string with the name of a table with geometry column within the DuckDB database conn. Data is returned from this object.
conn: A connection object to a DuckDB database. If NULL, the function runs on a temporary DuckDB database.
quiet: A logical value. If TRUE, suppresses any informational messages. Defaults to FALSE.

Value

A character vector containing hexadecimal-encoded WKB representations of the geometries

Details

HEXWKB is a hexadecimal string representation of Well-Known Binary (WKB) format. This encoding is human-readable (unlike raw WKB) while maintaining the compact binary structure. HEXWKB is commonly used in databases and web services for transmitting spatial data as text strings.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
## load packages
library(duckspatial)
library(sf)

# create a duckdb database in memory (with spatial extension)
conn <- ddbs_create_conn(dbdir = "memory")

## read data
argentina_sf <- st_read(system.file("spatial/argentina.geojson", package = "duckspatial"))

## store in duckdb
ddbs_write_vector(conn, argentina_sf, "argentina")

## convert geometries to HEXWKB
hexwkb_text <- ddbs_as_hexwkb(conn = conn, "argentina")

## convert without using a connection
hexwkb_text <- ddbs_as_hexwkb(argentina_sf)
} # }