PostGIS – How to Identify Geometry Types

Question

How can I identify the Geometry Type of records in a PostGIS table?

Answer

A PostGIS spatial table can contain records with different geometry types, and indeed depending on the application that you are using to view the data, the type of geometry can be very important. In order to identify the geometry type for records in a PostGIS table you can use the SQL window in PGAdmin.

Select st_astext(geom) from YOUR_TABLENAME

e.g.

Each record in the chosen Table will now be listed with their geometry type defined.

You can then update the SQL script to return extra columns from your data table, so you can identify which records have which type of geometry.

Select YOUR_COLUMN,st_astext(geom) from YOUR_TABLENAME

e.g.