Write a Spatial Object to a File — write

A robust and user-friendly wrapper around sf::st_write to save an sf object, for example, a corrected map.

Usage

write_map(map, file_path, overwrite = FALSE, ...)

Arguments

map: An sf object to be written to a file.
file_path: A character string specifying the path and filename for the output file (e.g., "path/to/my_corrected_map.shp").
overwrite: A logical value. If TRUE, it will overwrite an existing file at the specified path. Defaults to FALSE.
...: Additional arguments to be passed directly to sf::st_write (e.g., layer_options).

Value

Invisibly returns the input map object, allowing it to be used in a pipe chain.

Details

This function provides a straightforward way to save the output of the mapAI workflow (or any sf object) to a file on disk. It supports any file format that sf::st_write can handle. The function automatically infers the correct driver from the file extension (e.g., .shp -> "ESRI Shapefile", .gpkg -> "GPKG").

For safety, the function defaults to overwrite = FALSE, which will prevent accidentally overwriting an existing file. Advanced users can pass additional arguments directly to sf::st_write via the ... parameter.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# This example shows how to save data and ensure all created files are removed.

# --- 1. Create a sample sf object to write ---
data(parcels)
sample_map <- parcels[1:5, ]

# --- 2. Define a temporary file path ---
# Using tempfile() is best practice for examples.
output_path <- tempfile(fileext = ".shp")

# --- 3. Write the map to the file ---
write_map(sample_map, output_path, overwrite = TRUE)

# --- 4. Clean up ALL created files ---
# A shapefile creates multiple "sidecar" files (.dbf, .shx, .prj, etc.).
# This code finds all files with the same base name and removes them.
base_name <- tools::file_path_sans_ext(output_path)
files_to_remove <- list.files(dirname(base_name),
                              pattern = basename(base_name),
                              full.names = TRUE)
file.remove(files_to_remove)

# Check that the files are gone
print(list.files(dirname(output_path), pattern = basename(base_name)))
} # }