Nearest neighbor between point layer and line layer?

This question turned out to be a bit trickier than I thought to get right. There are many implementations of the shortest distance itself, such as the Shapely provided distance (from GEOS). Few of the solutions provide the intersection point itself, however, but only the distance.

My first attempt buffered the point by the distance between the point and polygon, and looked for intersections, but rounding errors prevent this from giving an exact answer.

Here's a complete solution using Shapely, based on these equations:

#!/usr/bin/env python
from shapely.geometry import Point, Polygon
from math import sqrt
from sys import maxint

# define our polygon of interest, and the point we'd like to test
# for the nearest location
polygon = Polygon(((0, 0), (0, 1), (1, 1), (1, 0), (0, 0)))
point = Point(0.5, 1.5)

# pairs iterator:
# http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1257413/1257446#1257446
def pairs(lst):
    i = iter(lst)
    first = prev = i.next()
    for item in i:
        yield prev, item
        prev = item
    yield item, first

# these methods rewritten from the C version of Paul Bourke's
# geometry computations:
# http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/geometry/pointline/
def magnitude(p1, p2):
    vect_x = p2.x - p1.x
    vect_y = p2.y - p1.y
    return sqrt(vect_x**2 + vect_y**2)

def intersect_point_to_line(point, line_start, line_end):
    line_magnitude =  magnitude(line_end, line_start)
    u = ((point.x - line_start.x) * (line_end.x - line_start.x) +
         (point.y - line_start.y) * (line_end.y - line_start.y)) \
         / (line_magnitude ** 2)

    # closest point does not fall within the line segment, 
    # take the shorter distance to an endpoint
    if u < 0.00001 or u > 1:
        ix = magnitude(point, line_start)
        iy = magnitude(point, line_end)
        if ix > iy:
            return line_end
        else:
            return line_start
    else:
        ix = line_start.x + u * (line_end.x - line_start.x)
        iy = line_start.y + u * (line_end.y - line_start.y)
        return Point([ix, iy])

nearest_point = None
min_dist = maxint

for seg_start, seg_end in pairs(list(polygon.exterior.coords)[:-1]):
    line_start = Point(seg_start)
    line_end = Point(seg_end)

    intersection_point = intersect_point_to_line(point, line_start, line_end)
    cur_dist =  magnitude(point, intersection_point)

    if cur_dist < min_dist:
        min_dist = cur_dist
        nearest_point = intersection_point

print "Closest point found at: %s, with a distance of %.2f units." % \
   (nearest_point, min_dist)

For posterity, it looks like this ArcView extension handles this problem quite nicely, too bad its on a dead platform written in a dead language...

A PostGIS answer (for multilinestring, if linestring, remove st_geometryn function)

select t2.gid as point_gid, t1.gid as line_gid, 
st_makeline(t2.geom,st_line_interpolate_point(st_geometryn(t1.geom,1),st_line_locate_point(st_geometryn(t1.geom,1),t2.geom))) as geom
from your_line_layer t1, your_point_layer t2, 
(
select gid as point_gid, 
(select gid 
from your_line_layer
order by st_distance(your_line_layer.geom, your_point_layer.geom)
limit 1 ) as line_gid
from your_point_layer
) as t3
where t1.gid = t3.line_gid
and t2.gid = t3.point_gid

If I understand you right the functionality you are asking for is built in PostGIS.

To get a point projected on a line you can use ST_Closestpoint (on PostGIS 1.5)

Some hints about how to use it you can read here: http://blog.jordogskog.no/2010/02/07/how-to-use-the-new-distance-related-functions-in-postgis-part1/

It is usable also to find the closest point on a polygon to another polygon for instance.

If you want the line between the two closest points on both geometries you can use ST_Shortestline. ST_Closestpoint is the first point in ST_Shortestline

The length of ST_Shortestline between two geometries is the same as ST_Distance between the geometries.