Geographic Information Systems Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for cartographers, geographers and GIS professionals. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I'm trying to open ne_10m_urban_areas.shp with rgdal::readOGR, but it gives me the bellow error
library(rgdal)
a <- readOGR(dsn = path.expand("C:/.../Desktop/"),
layer = "ne_10m_urban_areas.shp")
>Error in ogrInfo(dsn = dsn, layer = layer, encoding = encoding, use_iconv = use_iconv, :
>Cannot open layer
a <- shapefile("C:/.../Desktop/ne_10m_urban_areas.shp")
>Error: file.exists(extension(x, ".shx")) is not TRUE
file.exists("C:/.../Desktop/ne_10m_urban_areas.shp")
>[1] TRUE
This bit:
a <- shapefile("C:/.../Desktop/ne_10m_urban_areas.shp")
Error: file.exists(extension(x, ".shx")) is not TRUE
tells us that there is no ne_10m_urban_areas.shx file - note the file extension SHX not SHP. A valid shapefile needs a .shp, a .shx and usually a .dbf file (as well as possible others). Do you have all those in the same folder? I don't think so. There's your problem.
It is also possible you don't have even read permissions over the folder you are trying to open a layer from. This problem is especially pesky if running stuff from a docker container. In order to give yourself permission just type:
chmod -R 777 /path/to/folder
in terminal.
Make sure your file names match exactly. I had the same issue and I had all the files in the same folder, but the names didn't match exactly. Once they matched then it worked.
