Installing PostGIS

PostGIS adds geographic object support to PostgreSQL, turning it into a spatial database. GEOS, PROJ and GDAL should be installed prior to building PostGIS. You might also need additional libraries, see PostGIS requirements.

The psycopg2 module is required for use as the database adapter when using GeoDjango with PostGIS.

On Debian/Ubuntu, you are advised to install the following packages: postgresql-x.x, postgresql-x.x-postgis, postgresql-server-dev-x.x, and python-psycopg2 (x.x matching the PostgreSQL version you want to install). Alternately, you can build from source. Consult the platform-specific instructions if you are on macOS or Windows.

Post-installation

Creating a spatial database

PostGIS 2 includes an extension for PostgreSQL that’s used to enable spatial functionality:

$ createdb  <db name>
$ psql <db name>
> CREATE EXTENSION postgis;

The database user must be a superuser in order to run CREATE EXTENSION postgis;. The command is run during the migrate process. An alternative is to use a migration operation in your project:

from django.contrib.postgres.operations import CreateExtension
from django.db import migrations

class Migration(migrations.Migration):

    operations = [
        CreateExtension('postgis'),
        ...
    ]

If you plan to use PostGIS raster functionality on PostGIS 3+, you should also activate the postgis_raster extension. You can install the extension using the CreateExtension migration operation, or directly by running CREATE EXTENSION postgis_raster;.

GeoDjango does not currently leverage any PostGIS topology functionality. If you plan to use those features at some point, you can also install the postgis_topology extension by issuing CREATE EXTENSION postgis_topology;.

Managing the database

To administer the database, you can either use the pgAdmin III program (Start ‣ PostgreSQL X ‣ pgAdmin III) or the SQL Shell (Start ‣ PostgreSQL X ‣ SQL Shell). For example, to create a geodjango spatial database and user, the following may be executed from the SQL Shell as the postgres user:

postgres# CREATE USER geodjango PASSWORD 'my_passwd';
postgres# CREATE DATABASE geodjango OWNER geodjango;