josecarlosgonz · May 6, 2014 18:45 · May 6, 2014
diff --git a/merge_shapefile.R b/merge_shapefile.R
@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
+### Load a shape file and merge it with a csv
+### Author: Jose Gonzalez 
+### www.jose-gonzalez.org
+
+# This script shows how to load a shapefile, merge it with a csv and save it with the proper
+# encoding
+
+### Load rgdal
+
+require(rgdal)
+
+# Load csv
+data  <- read.csv("myData.csv", fileEncoding="utf8", stringsAsFactors=F)
+
+# Load shapefile using "UTF-8". Notice the "." is the directory and the shapefile name 
+# has no extention
+shp  <- readOGR(".", "myShapefile", stringsAsFactors=FALSE, encoding="UTF-8")
+# Explore with a quick plot
+plot(shp, axes=TRUE, border="gray")
+
+# Merge shapefile and csv
+temp  <- merge(shp, data, by.x="id", by.y="Code") 
+
+# The shapefile behaves as a data.frame. Explore a bit
+head(temp)
+
+# Check your locale and set shapefile encoding to UTF-8
+Sys.getlocale("LC_CTYPE")
+getCPLConfigOption("SHAPE_ENCODING")
+setCPLConfigOption("SHAPE_ENCODING", "UTF-8")
+
+# Write merged shapefile using UTF-8
+writeOGR(test, ".", "shp-merged", driver="ESRI Shapefile", layer_options= c(encoding= "UTF-8"),
+         overwrite_layer=T)