Dead Simple Random Points in Polygons with PostGIS

Since PostgreSQL 9.3 there has been a handy little keyword called LATERAL, which - combined with JOIN - might rock your GIS world in a second. To keep it simple, a LATERAL JOIN enables a subquery in the FROM part of a query to reference columns from preceding expressions in the FROM list. What the heck?

Imagine that not so unusual request to generate random points in polygons (something I needed to do today). Do it automatically without your favorite piece of desktop GIS software.

It is pretty easy using LATERAL JOIN:

SELECT
    a.id,
    b.*
FROM (
    VALUES(
        1,
        ST_SetSRID(
            ST_GeomFromText(
                'POLYGON((0 0, -1 0, -1 -1, 0 -1, 0 0))'
            ),
        4326)
    )
    UNION ALL
    VALUES(
        2,
        ST_SetSRID(
            ST_GeomFromText(
                'POLYGON((0 0, 1 0, 1 1, 0 1, 0 0))'
            ),
        4326)
    )
) a(id, geom)
CROSS JOIN LATERAL (
    SELECT ST_SetSRID(ST_MakePoint(tmp.x, tmp.y), 4326) geom
    FROM (
        SELECT
            random() * (ST_XMax(a.geom) - ST_XMin(a.geom)) + ST_XMin(a.geom) x,
            random() * (ST_YMax(a.geom) - ST_YMin(a.geom)) + ST_YMin(a.geom) y
        FROM generate_series(0,200)
    ) tmp
) b;

What actually happened over there? If you want to put points inside polygons, you need… polygons. We will do just fine with two of them created inside this query:

VALUES(
    1,
    ST_SetSRID(
        ST_GeomFromText(
            'POLYGON((0 0, -1 0, -1 -1, 0 -1, 0 0))'
        ),
    4326)
)
UNION ALL
VALUES(
    2,
    ST_SetSRID(
        ST_GeomFromText(
            'POLYGON((0 0, 1 0, 1 1, 0 1, 0 0))'
        ),
    4326)
)

All the magic happens inside the LATERAL JOIN part of the query:

CROSS JOIN LATERAL (
    SELECT ST_SetSRID(ST_MakePoint(tmp.x, tmp.y), 4326) geom
    FROM (
        SELECT
            random() * (ST_XMax(a.geom) - ST_XMin(a.geom)) + ST_XMin(a.geom) x,
            random() * (ST_YMax(a.geom) - ST_YMin(a.geom)) + ST_YMin(a.geom) y
        FROM generate_series(0,200)
    ) tmp
) b;

The inner SELECT calculates random points based on the extent of the polygon. Note it directly calls a.geom, a value that comes from the previous SELECT! The LATERAL JOIN part is thus run for every row of the previous SELECT statement inside FROM part of the query. This means it will return 201 points for each of the two polygons (run the query inside QGIS to see the result).

Note all the points fall inside the polygons by accident, because they are square. Otherwise a ST_Contains or ST_Within should be used inside the outermost WHERE query to filter outliers. This part could use some tweaking.