intermittent error converting sf to SpatVector

[bmcnellis]

I use some spData objects as part of a workflow, including state shapes for cropping:

states <- spData::us_states[which(spData::us_states$NAME %in% c('Colorado', 'Utah')), ]

Sometimes a direct conversion works with terra:

states <- terra::vect(states)

But lately its been giving me this error:

Error: [as,sf] coercion failed. You can try coercing via a Spatial* (sp) class

Using as(states, 'Spatial') also appears broken:

Error in st_geometry.sf(from) : attr(obj, "sf_column") does not point to a geometry column. Did you rename it, without setting st_geometry(obj) <- "newname"?

Using R 4.2.2 with spData 2.2.2, sf 1.0-9, sp 1.6-0, terra 1.7-22

[rhijmans]

This works if you load "sf" first

library(sf)
states <- spData::us_states
states <- states[states$NAME %in% c('Colorado', 'Utah'), ]
v <- terra::vect(states)
v
# class       : SpatVector 
# geometry    : polygons 
# dimensions  : 2, 6  (geometries, attributes)
# extent      : -114.0506, -102.0422, 36.99243, 42.00157  (xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax)
# coord. ref. : lon/lat NAD83 (EPSG:4269) 
# names       : GEOID     NAME REGION             AREA total_pop_10 total_pop_15
# type        : <chr>    <chr> <fact>            <chr>        <num>        <num>
# values      :    08 Colorado   West 269573.057693748    4.887e+06    5.279e+06
#                  49     Utah   West 219859.796916458    2.657e+06    2.903e+06

With the above I get

states
#Simple feature collection with 2 features and 6 fields
#Geometry type: MULTIPOLYGON
#Dimension:     XY
#Bounding box:  xmin: -114.0506 ymin: 36.99243 xmax: -102.0422 ymax: 42.00157
#Geodetic CRS:  NAD83
#   GEOID     NAME REGION            AREA total_pop_10 total_pop_15                       geometry
#3     08 Colorado   West 269573.1 [km^2]      4887061      5278906 MULTIPOLYGON (((-109.0501 4...
#45    49     Utah   West 219859.8 [km^2]      2657236      2903379 MULTIPOLYGON (((-114.0417 4...

But if I do not run library(sf) I get

states
#   GEOID     NAME REGION     AREA total_pop_10 total_pop_15 geometry
#3     08 Colorado   West 269573.1      4887061      5278906   -109.05008, -108.25065, -107.62562, ...
#45    49     Utah   West 219859.8      2657236      2903379   -114.04172, -113.89326, -113.24916, ...

And the coercion fails. Even though in both cases I get

class(states)
#[1] "sf"         "data.frame"

[bmcnellis]

This works, thanks! I was indeed using class to see if the methods were importing correctly, which I suppose was not the case! Perhaps adding that suggestion to the error message would be helpful for future users?

Thanks for all your work on this package!

[rhijmans]

This now gives a clearer error message:

states <- terra::vect(states)
#Error: [as,sf] the geometry column is not valid (perhaps first load the sf package)