I'm reading shapefiles from the US Census Bureau known as Tiger files. See
http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/tgrshp2008/tgrshp2008.html
An example is:
kc.edges.ll <-
readOGR(file.path(tiger.king.dir,'tl_2009_53033_edges'),'tl_2009_53033_edges')
which creates (in this case) a SpatialLinesDataFrame.
The directory ( "dsn" argument to readOGR()) in this example includes
six files:
tl_2009_53033_edges.dbf
tl_2009_53033_edges.prj
tl_2009_53033_edges.shp
tl_2009_53033_edges.shp.xml
tl_2009_53033_edges.shx
The Tiger documentation says that the .shp.xml file contains
metadata, and indeed it does. For example, here is an excerpt:
(I have removed indentation)
<attr>
<attrlabl>MTFCC</attrlabl>
<attrdef>MAF/TIGER feature class code of the primary feature for the
edge</attrdef>
<attrdefs>U.S. Census Bureau</attrdefs>
<attrdomv>
<edom>
<edomv>C3023</edomv>
<edomvd>Island</edomvd>
<edomvds>U.S. Census Bureau</edomvds>
</edom>
In brief, this section of metadata decodes the codes in the "MTFCC"
column in kc.edges...@data into human-friendly text string.
I would like to be able to somehow link to or display the decoded
values when I look at the data.
Is there some function or package or something that I can use to gain
access to the xml metadata and work with it in subsequent scripts
that operate on this kc.edges.ll SpatialLinesDataFrame object?
R, QGis, or even GRASS tools would be much appreciated.
Thanks
-Don
--
--------------------------------------
Don MacQueen
Environmental Protection Department
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Livermore, CA, USA
925-423-1062
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