I'm trying to calculate the x and y centroids for a table using ST_Centroid. The documentation says that it returns the geometric center of a geometry. I first made a column X
:
ALTER TABLE "test_table" ADD X double precision;
and was then planning on storing the x component of the centroid there. My code to calculate the centroid is as follows:
select
ST_Centroid(a.the_geom)
FROM
"test_table" AS a
However this query returns the following result which I don't understand:
"01010000006BAEC2FBDFC61E415B3E9E2946520541"
"0101000000E6ABADEBFEC51E4102E9A95858520541"
"01010000003233333321C61E410BD7A37061520541"
"0101000000F710787300C61E4177C8C783D94E0541"
My second problem with this approach is trying to store the result. When I tried to insert this result into Column X
I could not figure out the correct syntax. What I tried using was:
INSERT INTO "test_table" (X)
VALUES ( ST_Centroid(a.the_geom) ),
FROM "test_table" AS a
and also
INSERT INTO "test_table" (X)
VALUES ( SELECT ST_Centroid(a.the_geom)
FROM "test_table" AS a)
but neither of these work.
My two very basic questions are (1) what is the value being returned by ST_Centroid
, and (2) how I can I insert the result into an existing table?