Description

The function supports splitting a line by (multi)point, (multi)line or (multi)polygon boundary, a (multi)polygon by line. The returned geometry is always a collection.

Think of this function as the opposite of ST_Union. Theoretically applying ST_Union to the elements of the returned collection should always yield the original geometry.

Availability: 2.0.0

Changed: 2.2.0 support for splitting a line by a multiline, a multipoint or (multi)polygon boundary was introduced.

	To improve the robustness of ST_Split it may be convenient to ST_Snap the input to the blade in advance using a very low tolerance. Otherwise the internally used coordinate grid may cause tolerance problems, where coordinates of input and blade do not fall onto each other and the input is not being split correctly (see #2192).

	When a (multi)polygon is passed as as the blade, its linear component (the boundary) is used for cutting the input.

Examples

Polygon Cut by Line

Before Split

After split

-- this creates a geometry collection consisting of the 2 halves of the polygon
-- this is similar to the example we demonstrated in ST_BuildArea
SELECT ST_Split(circle, line)
FROM (SELECT 
    ST_MakeLine(ST_MakePoint(10, 10),ST_MakePoint(190, 190)) As line,
    ST_Buffer(ST_GeomFromText('POINT(100 90)'), 50) As circle) As foo;
    
-- result --
 GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POLYGON((150 90,149.039264020162 80.2454838991936,146.193976625564 70.8658283817455,..), POLYGON(..)))
 
-- To convert to individual polygons, you can use ST_Dump or ST_GeometryN
SELECT ST_AsText((ST_Dump(ST_Split(circle, line))).geom) As wkt
FROM (SELECT 
    ST_MakeLine(ST_MakePoint(10, 10),ST_MakePoint(190, 190)) As line,
    ST_Buffer(ST_GeomFromText('POINT(100 90)'), 50) As circle) As foo;
    
-- result --
wkt
---------------
POLYGON((150 90,149.039264020162 80.2454838991936,..))
POLYGON((60.1371179574584 60.1371179574584,58.4265193848728 62.2214883490198,53.8060233744357 ..))
            

Multilinestring Cut by point

Before Split

After split

SELECT ST_AsText(ST_Split(mline, pt)) As wktcut
        FROM (SELECT 
    ST_GeomFromText('MULTILINESTRING((10 10, 190 190), (15 15, 30 30, 100 90))') As mline,
    ST_Point(30,30) As pt) As foo;
    
wktcut
------
GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(
    LINESTRING(10 10,30 30),
    LINESTRING(30 30,190 190),
    LINESTRING(15 15,30 30),
    LINESTRING(30 30,100 90)
)
            

See Also

ST_AsText, ST_BuildArea, ST_Dump, ST_GeometryN, ST_Union, ST_Subdivide