Description

Calculates the 2D length of a geometry on an ellipsoid. This is useful if the coordinates of the geometry are in longitude/latitude and a length is desired without reprojection. The ellipsoid is a separate database type and can be constructed as follows:

	Will return 0 for anything that is not a MULTILINESTRING or LINESTRING

	This is much like ST_Length_Spheroid and ST_3DLength_Spheroid except it will throw away the Z coordinate in calculations.

Examples

SELECT ST_Length2D_Spheroid( geometry_column,
			  'SPHEROID["GRS_1980",6378137,298.257222101]' )
			  FROM geometry_table;

SELECT ST_Length2D_Spheroid( the_geom, sph_m ) As tot_len,
ST_Length2D_Spheroid(ST_GeometryN(the_geom,1), sph_m) As len_line1,
ST_Length2D_Spheroid(ST_GeometryN(the_geom,2), sph_m) As len_line2
			  FROM (SELECT ST_GeomFromText('MULTILINESTRING((-118.584 38.374,-118.583 38.5),
	(-71.05957 42.3589 , -71.061 43))') As the_geom,
CAST('SPHEROID["GRS_1980",6378137,298.257222101]' As spheroid) As sph_m)  as foo;
	tot_len      |    len_line1     |    len_line2
------------------+------------------+------------------
 85204.5207562955 | 13986.8725229309 | 71217.6482333646

 --3D Observe same answer
SELECT ST_Length2D_Spheroid( the_geom, sph_m ) As tot_len,
ST_Length2D_Spheroid(ST_GeometryN(the_geom,1), sph_m) As len_line1,
ST_Length2D_Spheroid(ST_GeometryN(the_geom,2), sph_m) As len_line2
			  FROM (SELECT ST_GeomFromEWKT('MULTILINESTRING((-118.584 38.374 20,-118.583 38.5 30),
	(-71.05957 42.3589 75, -71.061 43 90))') As the_geom,
CAST('SPHEROID["GRS_1980",6378137,298.257222101]' As spheroid) As sph_m)  as foo;

	tot_len      |    len_line1     |    len_line2
------------------+------------------+------------------
 85204.5207562955 | 13986.8725229309 | 71217.6482333646

See Also

ST_GeometryN, ST_Length_Spheroid, ST_3DLength_Spheroid