Inserting and selecting PostGIS Geometry with Gorm

I used @robbieperry22's answer with a different encoding library and found I didn't need to tinker with bytes at all.

Included gist for reference.

import  "github.com/twpayne/go-geom/encoding/geojson"


type EWKBGeomPoint geom.Point

func (g *EWKBGeomPoint) Scan(input interface{}) error {
    gt, err := ewkb.Unmarshal(input.([]byte))
    if err != nil {
        return err
    }
    g = gt.(*EWKBGeomPoint)

    return nil
}

func (g EWKBGeomPoint) Value() (driver.Value, error) {
    b := geom.Point(g)
    bp := &b
    ewkbPt := ewkb.Point{Point: bp.SetSRID(4326)}
    return ewkbPt.Value()
}


type Track struct {
    gorm.Model

    GeometryPoint EWKBGeomPoint `gorm:"column:geom"`
}

And then used a little customization on the table set up/migrate part:

err = db.Exec(`CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS tracks (
    id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
    geom geometry(POINT, 4326) NOT NULL
);`).Error
if err != nil {
    return err
}

err = gormigrate.New(db, gormigrate.DefaultOptions, []*gormigrate.Migration{
{
    ID: "init",
    Migrate: func(tx *gorm.DB) error {
        return tx.CreateTable(
            Tables...,
        ).Error
    },
},
{
    ID: "tracks_except_geom",
    Migrate: func(tx *gorm.DB) error {
        return db.AutoMigrate(Track{}).Error
    },
},
}).Migrate()

The solution I ended up using was as follows:

First I created new types that wrapped all of the orb types, for example:

type Polygon4326 orb.Polygon
type Point4326 orb.Point

Then I implemented the Scan(), Value() methods on each type. I had to however edit the bytes and convert to/from hexadecimal. When you directly query on a spatial column in PostGIS, it will return a hexadecimal representation of EWKB, essentially WKB, but including 4 bytes to represent the projection ID (in my case 4326).

Before inserting, I had to add the bytes that represent the projection of 4326.

Before reading, I had to strip those bytes, since orb's built in scanning expected WKB format.

Is it possible to make some sort of trigger or rule that would automatically call the needed functions on the data coming in/out?

Ever tried gorm hooks, example:

type Example struct {
    ID   int
    Name string
    Geom ...
}

func (e *Example) AfterFind() (err error) {
    e.Geom = ... // Do whatever you like here
    return
}

There is a handful of hooks that you can use. I find them pretty neat and useful.

Another solution, which I ended up using was with go-geos, as I discovered I needed to use the GEOS C library. With that, I am able to convert the struct into WKT for inserting (as postgis accepts it as regular text) and convert from WKB when scanning.

type Geometry4326 *geos.Geometry

// Value converts the given Geometry4326 struct into WKT such that it can be stored in a 
// database. Implements Valuer interface for use with database operations.
func (g Geometry4326) Value() (driver.Value, error) {

    str, err := g.ToWKT()
    if err != nil {
        return nil, err
    }

    return "SRID=4326;" + str, nil
}

// Scan converts the hexadecimal representation of geometry into the given Geometry4326 
// struct. Implements Scanner interface for use with database operations.
func (g *Geometry4326) Scan(value interface{}) error {

    bytes, ok := value.([]byte)
    if !ok {
        return errors.New("cannot convert database value to geometry")
    }

    str := string(bytes)

    geom, err := geos.FromHex(str)
    if err != nil {
        return errors.Wrap(err, "cannot get geometry from hex")
    }

    geometry := Geometry4326(geom)
    *g = geometry

    return nil
}

This solution might not be ideal for everyone as not everyone needs to use the GEOS C library, which can be a pain to get working on windows. I'm sure though that the same thing can be accomplished using different libraries.

I additionally implemented UnmarshalJSON() and MarshalJSON() on the struct so that it can automatically Marshal/Unmarshal GeoJSON, and then save/get from the database seamlessly. I accomplished this using geojson-go to convert GeoJSON to/from a struct, and then geojson-geos-go to convert said struct into the go-geos struct I was using. A little convoluted, yes, but it works.