Simple CLI Program for Comparing Spatial Indexing Methods

I gave a talk at the Italian C++ Community where I explain how spatial indices work, when they are useful, and the code I wrote.
Link to the video on youtube: link

How to Build

Dependencies

• GEOS
• Shapelib
• CLI

build with cmake

mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build .

If you have installed the dependency libraries in a non-standard path, you must specify the path before building with:

cmake .. -DGEOS_PATH:PATH=<your_path_to_geos>
cmake .. -DSHAPELIB_PATH:PATH=<your_path_to_shapelib>
cmake .. -DCLI_PATH:PATH=<your_path_to_cli>

Functionality

I created a CLI with several commands:

• help
  Displays the list of commands and how to use them.

• load [file.shp]
  Reads a shapefile containing geometries and saves them in memory.

• build [kd-tree|quad-tree|r-tree|geohash]
  Builds the specified data structure with the previously loaded geometries.

• search_range [kd-tree|quad-tree|r-tree|geohash] --x1 --y1 --x2 --y2
  Performs a query on the specified data structure using the rectangle defined by the given coordinates.

• search_range [kd-tree|quad-tree|r-tree|geohash]
  Performs a query on the specified data structure using a randomly generated rectangle.

• compare <iterations>
  Performs n queries on the already built data structures and prints the times.

• compare --x1 --y1 --x2 --y2
  Performs a query on the already built data structures using the rectangle defined by the given coordinates and prints the times.