FlatGeobuf to Shapefile Converter
The reluctant downgrade: an upstream system requires Shapefile and you have FlatGeobuf. The converter helps you survive the round-trip with eyes open.
Convert FlatGeobuf to Shapefile now
Common issues converting FlatGeobuf to Shapefile
- FlatGeobuf has no field-name length cap; Shapefile DBF columns are uppercased and capped at 10 chars. Long descriptive names will be silently truncated.
- FlatGeobuf int64 / long survives DBF only up to roughly 15 significant digits (DBF numeric precision). Larger values become strings.
- Shapefile is single-geometry-type. FlatGeobuf files with mixed types (rare but possible per spec) produce only the dominant type in output.
- CPG sidecar declares UTF-8 to preserve non-ASCII attribute strings. Tools that ignore .cpg (older ArcGIS) will fall back to Latin-1 — pre-process names if that's a concern.
Frequently asked questions
Will my long descriptive field names survive?
No — DBF caps at 10 chars and uppercases. Rename pre-conversion or accept the truncation. The full names are dropped, not preserved in metadata.
What about datetime fields?
FlatGeobuf datetime maps to DBF D (date) when the time component is zero; otherwise the converter stringifies as ISO-8601 and stores as Character.
Is the spatial index preserved?
No — Shapefile uses .sbn / .qix indexes which are tool-specific. The converter doesn't emit these; QGIS or ArcGIS will build them on first open.
How does coordinate precision compare?
Both formats use IEEE 754 double-precision — geometry round-trips lossless. The lossy parts are field-name truncation and DBF's limited type system.