Description

Returns the Well-Known Binary representation of the geometry. There are 2 variants of the function. The first variant takes no endian encoding paramater and defaults to little endian. The second variant takes a second argument denoting the encoding - using little-endian ('NDR') or big-endian ('XDR') encoding.

This is useful in binary cursors to pull data out of the database without converting it to a string representation.

	The WKB spec does not include the SRID. To get the OGC WKB with SRID format use ST_AsEWKB

	ST_AsBinary is the reverse of ST_GeomFromWKB. Use ST_GeomFromWKB to convert to a postgis geometry from ST_AsBinary representation.

This method implements the OpenGIS Simple Features Implementation Specification for SQL. OGC SPEC s2.1.1.1

This method implements the SQL/MM specification: SQL-MM 3: 5.1.37

Examples

SELECT ST_AsBinary(ST_GeomFromText('POLYGON((0 0,0 1,1 1,1 0,0 0))',4326));

		   st_asbinary
--------------------------------
\001\003\000\000\000\001\000\000\000\005
\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000
\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000
\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000
\000\000\000\360?\000\000\000\000\000\000
\360?\000\000\000\000\000\000\360?\000\000
\000\000\000\000\360?\000\000\000\000\000
\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000
\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000
(1 row)

SELECT ST_AsBinary(ST_GeomFromText('POLYGON((0 0,0 1,1 1,1 0,0 0))',4326), 'XDR');
		   st_asbinary
--------------------------------
\000\000\000\000\003\000\000\000\001\000\000\000\005\000\000\000\000\000
\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000
\000?\360\000\000\000\000\000\000?\360\000\000\000\000\000\000?\360\000\000
\000\000\000\000?\360\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000
\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000
(1 row)

See Also

ST_AsEWKB, ST_AsEWKT, ST_AsText, ST_GeomFromEWKB