osmconvert - Man Page

osmconvert options [input file]

This program reads different file formats of the OpenStreetMap project and converts the data to the selected output file format.

-b=<x1>,<y1>,<x2>,<y2>

If you want to limit the geographical region, you can define a bounding box. To do this, enter the southwestern and the northeastern corners of that area. For example: -b=-0.5,51,0.5,52

-B=<border_polygon>

Alternatively to a bounding box you can use a border polygon to limit the geographical region. The format of a border polygon file can be found in the OSM Wiki: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osmosis/Polygon_Filter_File_Format
You do not need to strictly follow the format description, you must ensure that every line of coordinates starts with blanks.

--complete-ways

If applying a border box or a border polygon, all nodes the borders are excluded; even then if they belong to a way which is not entirely excluded because it has some nodes inside the borders. This option will ensure that every way stays complete, even it it intersects the borders. This will result in slower processing, and the program will loose its ability to read from standard input. It is recommended to use .o5m format as input format to compensate most of the speed disadvantage.

--complex-multipolygons,  --complex-boundaries

Same as before, but multipolygons resp. boundaries will not be cut at the borders too.

--all-to-nodes

Some applications do not have the ability to process ways or relations, they just accept nodes as input. However, more and more complex object are mapped as ways or even relations in order to get all their details into the database. Apply this option if you want to convert ways and relations to nodes and thereby make them available to applications which can only deal with nodes. For each way a node is created. The way's id is increased by 10^15 and taken as id for the new node. The node's longitude and latitude are set to the way's geographical center. Same applies to relations, however they get 2*10^15 as id offset.

--add-bbox-tags

This option adds a tag with a bounding box to each object. The tag will contain the border coordinates in this order: min Longitude, min Latitude, max Longitude , max Latitude. e.g.:  <tag k="bBox" v="-0.5000,51.0000,0.5000,52.0000"/>

--add-bboxarea-tags

A tag for an estimated area value for the bbox is added to each way and each relation. The unit is square meters. For example:  <tag k="bBoxArea" v="33828002"/>

--add-bboxweight-tags

This option will add the binary logarithm of the bbox area of each way and each relation. For example:  <tag k="bBoxWeight" v="20"/>

--add-bboxwidth-tags

A tag for an estimated width value for the bbox is added to each way and each relation. The unit is meters. For example:  <tag k="bBoxWidth" v="825"/>

--add-bboxwidthweight-tags

This option will add the binary logarithm of the bbox width of each way and each relation. For example:  <tag k="bBoxWidthWeight" v="10"/>

--object-type-offset=<id offset>

If applying the --all-to-nodes option as explained above, you may adjust the id offset. For example: --object-type-offset=4000000000
By appending "+1" to the offset, the program will create ids in a sequence with step 1. This might be useful if the there is a subsequently running application which cannot process large id numbers. Example:
--object-type-offset=1900000000+1

--drop-broken-refs

Use this option if you need to delete references to nodes which have been excluded because lying outside the borders (mandatory for some applications, e.g. Map Composer, JOSM).

--drop-author

For most applications the author tags are not needed. If you specify this option, no author information will be written: no changeset, user or timestamp.

--drop-version

If you want to exclude not only the author information but also the version number, specify this option.

--drop-nodes --drop-ways --drop-relations

According to the combination of these parameters, no members of the referred section will be written.

--modify-tags=<tag_modification_list>

The tag modification list determines which tags will be modified. The example --modify-tags="highway=primary to =secondary" will change every "primary" highway into "secondary". You can also use comparisons or add additional tags: --modify-way-tags="maxspeed>200 add highspeed=yes"

--modify-node-tags=TAG_MODIFICATION_LIST --modify-way-tags=TAG_MODIFICATION_LIST --modify-relation-tags=TAG_MODIFICATION_LIST --modify-node-way-tags=TAG_MODIFICATION_LIST --modify-node-relation-tags=TAG_MODIFICATION_LIST --modify-way-relation-tags=TAG_MODIFICATION_LIST

Same as above, but just for the specified object types.

--diff

Calculate difference between two files and create a new .osc or .o5c file. There must be TWO input files and borders cannot be applied. Both files must be sorted by object type and id. Created objects will appear in the output file as "modified", unless having version number 1.

--diff-contents

Similar to --diff, this option calculates differences between two OSM files. Here, to determine the differences complete OSM objects are consulted, not only the version numbers. Unfortunately, this option strictly requires both input files to have .o5m format.

--subtract

The output file will not contain any object which exists in one of the input files following this directive. For example: osmconvert input.o5m --subtract minus.o5m -o=output.o5m

--pbf-granularity=<val>

Rarely .pbf files come with non-standard granularity. osmconvert will recognize this and suggest to specify the abnormal lon/lat granularity using this command line option. Allowed values are: 100 (default), 1000, 10000, ..., 10000000.

--emulate-osmosis --emulate-pbf2osm

In case of .osm output format, the program will try to use the same data syntax as Osmosis, resp. pbf2osm.

--fake-author

If you have dropped author information (--drop-author) that data will be lost, of course. Some programs however require author information on input although they do not need that data. For this purpose, you can fake the author information. osmconvert will write changeset 1, timestamp 1970.

--fake-version

Same as --fake-author, but - if .osm xml is used as output format - only the version number will be written (version 1). This is useful if you want to inspect the data with JOSM.

--fake-lonlat

Some programs depend on getting longitude/latitude values, even when the object in question shall be deleted. With this option you can have osmconvert to fake these values:
... lat="0" lon="0" ...
Note that this is for XML files only (.osc and .osh).

-h

Display a short parameter overview.

--help

Display this help.

--merge-versions

Some .osc files contain different versions of one object. Use this option to accept such duplicates on input.

--out-osm

Data will be written in .osm format. This is the default output format.

--out-osc

The OSM Change format will be used for output. Please note that OSM objects which are to be deleted will be represented by their ids only.

--out-osh

For every OSM object, the appropriate 'visible' tag will be added to meet 'full planet history' specification.

--out-o5m

The .o5m format will be used. This format has the same structure as the conventional .osm format, but the data are stored as binary numbers and are therefore much more compact than in .osm format. No packing is used, so you can pack .o5m files using every file packer you want, e.g. lzo, bz2, etc.

--out-o5c

This is the change file format of .o5m data format. All <delete> tags will not be performed as delete actions but converted into .o5c data format.

--out-pbf

For output, PBF format will be used.

--out-csv

A character separated list will be written to output. The default separator is Tab, the default columns are: type, id, name. You can change both by using the options --csv-separator= and --csv=

--csv-headline

Choose this option to print a headline to csv output.

--csv-separator=<sep>

You may change the default separator (Tab) to a different character or character sequence. For example: --csv-separator="; "

--csv=<columns>

If you want to have certain columns in your csv list, please specify their names as shown in this example: --csv="@id name ref description" There are a few special column names for header data: @otype (object type 0..2), @oname (object type name), @id @lon, @lat, @version, @timestamp, @changeset, @uid, @user

--out-none

This will be no standard output. This option is for testing purposes only.

--timestamp=<date_and_time> --timestamp=NOW<seconds_relative_to_now>

If you want to set the OSM timestamp of your output file, supply it with this option. Date and time must be formatted according OSM date/time specifications. For example: --timestamp=2011-01-31T23:59:30Z You also can supply a relative time in seconds, e.g. 24h ago: --timestamp=NOW-86400

--out-timestamp

With this option set, osmconvert prints just the time stamp of the input file, nothing else.

--statistics

This option activates a statistics counter. The program will print statistical data to stderr.

--out-statistics

Same as --statistics, but the statistical data will be written to standard output.

-o=<outfile>

Standard output will be rerouted to the specified file. If no output format has been specified, the program will rely on the file name extension.

-t=<tempfile>

If borders are to be applied or broken references to be eliminated, osmconvert creates and uses two temporary files. This parameter defines their name prefix. The default value is "osmconvert_tempfile".

--parameter-file=FILE

If you want to supply one ore more command line arguments by a parameter file, please use this option and specify the file name. Within the parameter file, parameters must be separated by empty lines. Line feeds inside a parameter will be converted to spaces. Lines starting with "// " will be treated as comments.

-v --verbose

With activated 'verbose' mode, some statistical data and diagnosis data will be displayed. If -v resp. --verbose is the first parameter in the line, osmconvert will display all input parameters.

To speed-up the process, the program uses some main memory for a hash table. By default, it uses 1200 MB for storing a flag for every possible node, 150 for the way flags, and 10 relation flags. Every byte holds the flags for 8 ID numbers, i.e., in 1200 MB the program can store 9600 million flags. As there are less than 5700 million IDs for nodes at present (May 2018), 720 MB would suffice. So, for example, you can decrease the hash sizes to e.g. 720, 80 and 2 MB using this option:

--hash-memory=720-80-2

But keep in mind that the OSM database is continuously expanding. For this reason the program-own default value is higher than shown in the example, and it may be appropriate to increase it in the future. If you do not want to bother with the details, you can enter the amount of memory as a sum, and the program will divide it by itself. For example:

--hash-memory=1000

These 1000 MiB will be split in three parts: 800 for nodes, 150 for ways, and 50 for relations.

Because we are taking hashes, it is not necessary to provide all the suggested memory; the program will operate with less hash memory too. But, in this case, the border filter will be less effective, i.e., some ways and some relations will be left in the output file although they should have been excluded. The maximum value the program accepts for the hash size is 4000 MiB; If you exceed the maximum amount of memory available on your system, the program will try to reduce this amount and display a warning message.

There is another temporary memory space which is used only for the conversion of ways and relations to nodes (option --all-to-nodes). This space is sufficient for up to 25 Mio. OSM objects, 400 MB of main memory are needed for this purpose, 800 MB if extended option --add-bbox-tags has been invoked. If this is not sufficient or if you want to save memory, you can configure the maximum number of OSM objects by yourself. For example:

--max-objects=35000000

The number of references per object is limited to 100,000. This will be sufficient for all OSM files. If you are going to create your own OSM files by converting shapefiles or other files to OSM format, this might result in way objects with more than 100,000 nodes. For this reason you will need to increase the maximum accordingly. Example:

--max-refs=400000

When extracting a geographical region (using -b or -B), the input file must contain the objects ordered by their type: first, all nodes, next, all ways, followed by all relations. Within each of these sections, the objects section must be sorted by their id in ascending order.

Usual .osm, .osc, .o5m, o5c and .pbf files adhere to this condition. This means that you do not have to worry about this limitation. osmconvert will display an error message if this sequence is broken.

If a polygon file for borders is supplied, the maximum number of polygon points is about 40,000.

This program is for experimental use. Expect malfunctions and data loss. Do not use the program in productive or commercial systems.

There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. Please send any bug reports to marqqs@gmx.eu

osmconvert europe.pbf --drop-author >europe.osm
osmconvert europe.pbf |gzip >europe.osm.gz
bzcat europe.osm.bz2 |./osmconvert --out-pbf >europe.pbf
osmconvert europe.pbf -B=ch.poly >switzerland.osm
osmconvert switzerland.osm --out-o5m >switzerland.o5m
osmconvert june_july.osc --out-o5c >june_july.o5c
osmconvert june.o5m june_july.o5c.gz --out-o5m >july.o5m
osmconvert sep.osm sep_oct.osc oct_nov.osc >nov.osm
osmconvert northamerica.osm southamerica.osm >americas.osm

osmfilter(1), osmupdate(1)

osmconvert was written by Markus Weber

osmfilter(1), osmupdate(1).