Finding and replacing coordinates in GeoJSON

Question

I have converted kml files to GeoJSON strings. These represent polygons that are often not closed. I want to enforce their closing by searching for the first lat/lon coordinate in the string, checks if this matches with the last coordinate string, and if not, plot the first coordinate string behind the last coordinate string. An example:

textstring = '''{"type":"FeatureCollection","features":[{"type":"Feature","geometry":{"type":"Polygon","coordinates":[[[**-76.863853437826,2.49314161017537**],[-76.863723769784,2.4932265188545],[-76.8627395667136,2.49319550581276],[**-76.863855677,2.49314156433**]]]},"properties":{"pointCount":"3","length":"0.0","area":"0.00001"}}]}'''

In this string you see that the first coordinate does not match the last coordinate (open polygon).

I used this regex code to find the first coordinate, but it is not robust because it does not respond well on coordinates having or not having a negative (-) sign:

import re

textstring = '''{"type":"FeatureCollection","features":[{"type":"Feature","geometry":{"type":"Polygon","coordinates":[[[-76.863853437826,2.49314161017537],[-76.863723769784,2.4932265188545],[-76.8627395667136,2.49319550581276],[-76.863855677,2.49314156433]]]},"properties":{"pointCount":"3","length":"0.0","area":"0.00001"}}]}'''

coord_first = re.search(r'(-[0-9.]+|[0-9.]+,[0-9.]+|-[0-9.]+)',textstring)
print(coord_first)

Answer 1

GeoJSON is JSON data, it's easier if you treat it as such. Actually it's probably better to treat it as geospatial data and use a geospatial library, but if you're stuck with the standard library:

import json
str_data = '''{"type":"FeatureCollection","features":[{"type":"Feature","geometry":{"type":"Polygon","coordinates":[[[-76.863853437826,2.49314161017537],[-76.863723769784,2.4932265188545],[-76.8627395667136,2.49319550581276],[-76.863855677,2.493141564331234]]]},"properties":{"pointCount":"3","length":"0.0","area":"0.00001"}}]}'''
json_data = json.loads(str_data)

for feature in json_data['features']:
    for linestring in feature['geometry']['coordinates']:
        first_coord = linestring[0]
        last_coord = linestring[-1]
        if first_coord != last_coord:
            linestring.append(first_coord)

print(json.dumps(json_data))