Splitting geometry collection into its items using Python and QGIS API

Question

I'm getting some geometries via intersecting lines by polygons (somewhat blindly - I don't really know if intersection exists and actually I don't need to know) using python and QGIS API: some_line.intersection(some_polygon).

To my mind I may get several types of geometry:

1. None (if there is no intersection).
2. Point
3. Linestring
4. Multilinestring
5. Geometry collections (when there are several points and/or lines)

but the geometry I need in the end is a Linestring (Polyline) or several Linestrings (not MultilineStrings). I can identify geometry type using wkbType(). It returns integer, and this integer corresponds to this order.

How can I split MultilineStrings and Geometry collections and get the parts they are consist of (preferably using QGIS API)?

I wasn't able to find such function in QGIS API, maybe just missed it? There is also GetGeometryRef() function in OGR that I believe could help me, but I can't figure out how to implement it in my case.

Answer 1

One of the developers showed me how to do it. It is quite easy. One need to export geometry to GeometryCollection like: i = line.intersection(polygon).asGeometryCollection() and then pick items form it (like for n in i: or i[0]).

Here is an example:

>>>poly = QgsGeometry.fromPolygon([  [ QgsPoint(1,3), QgsPoint(4,3), QgsPoint(4,1), QgsPoint(3,1), QgsPoint(3,2), QgsPoint(2,2), QgsPoint(2,1), QgsPoint(1,1), QgsPoint(1,3) ] ])
>>>line = QgsGeometry.fromPolyline( [ QgsPoint(2,1), QgsPoint(7,2) ] )
>>>i = line.intersection(poly).asGeometryCollection()
>>>i[0].exportToWkt()
POINT(2.000000 1.000000)
>>>i[1].exportToWkt()
LINESTRING(3.000000 1.200000, 4.000000 1.400000)