EF Core Providers Spatial Data

Spatial data represents the physical location and the shape of the objects. These objects can be point locations or more complex objects such as countries, roads, or lakes.

SQL Server supports two spatial data types: the geometry data type and the geography data type.

• Geometry: The geometry type represents data in a Euclidean (flat) coordinate system.
• Geography: The geography type represents data in a round-earth coordinate system.

Both data types are implemented as .NET common language runtime (CLR) data types in SQL Server.

Installation

EF Core supports mapping to spatial data types using the NetTopologySuite spatial library. To use spatial data with EF Core, you need to install the Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer.NetTopologySuite NuGet package.

PM> Install-Package Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer.NetTopologySuite

The NetTopologySuite is a spatial library for .NET. EF Core enables mapping to spatial data types in the database by using NTS types in your model.

Let's create the SportsGround model, which contains a Point data type available in NetTopologySuite.Geometries. It will save the geographic location of a sports ground.

public class SportsGround
{
    public int ID { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public Point Location { get; set; }
}

To enable mapping to spatial types using NetTopologySuite, call the UseNetTopologySuite method on the provider's DbContext options builder. For SQL Server, you can call it like as shown below.

public class SportsGroundContext : DbContext
{
    protected override void OnConfiguring(DbContextOptionsBuilder optionsBuilder)
    {
        optionsBuilder.UseSqlServer(@"Data Source=(localdb)\ProjectsV13;Initial Catalog=SportsGroundDb;", 
            x => x.UseNetTopologySuite());
    }

    public DbSet<SportsGround> SportsGrounds { get; set; }
}

Now we need to save some test data of sports ground to the database.

var geometryFactory = NtsGeometryServices.Instance.CreateGeometryFactory(srid: 4326);
var currentLocation = geometryFactory.CreatePoint(new Coordinate(-69.938951, 18.481188));

using (var context = new SportsGroundContext())
{
    context.Database.EnsureCreated();
    var list = new List<SportsGround>()
    {
        new SportsGround()
        {
            Name = "Sports Complex",
            Location = geometryFactory.CreatePoint(new Coordinate(-69.9388777, 18.4839233)),
        },

        new SportsGround()
        {
            Name = "Gaddafi Stadium",
            Location = geometryFactory.CreatePoint(new Coordinate(-69.9118804, 18.4826214)),
        },

        new SportsGround()
        {
            Name = "Internation Sports Stadium",
            Location = geometryFactory.CreatePoint(new Coordinate(-69.9334673, 18.4718075)),
        }
    };
    context.SportsGrounds.AddRange(list);
    context.SaveChanges();
}

Let's say we want to query all the sports grounds whose distance to the current location is less than 2 km (2,000 meters).

using (var context = new SportsGroundContext())
{
    var grounds = context.SportsGrounds
        .OrderBy(x => x.Location.Distance(currentLocation))
        .Where(x => x.Location.IsWithinDistance(currentLocation, 2000))
        .Select(x => new { x.Name, Distance = x.Location.Distance(currentLocation) })
        .ToList();

    foreach (var ground in grounds)
    {
        Console.WriteLine($"{ground.Name} ({ground.Distance.ToString("N0")} meters away)");
    }
}

Let's run your application, and you will see the following output.

Sports Complex (303 meters away)
Internation Sports Stadium (1,189 meters away)