Spatial Relations

etter supports 15 built-in spatial relations across three categories.

Containment

Relation	Behavior	Default distance
in	Exact geometry match — passthrough	—

Example: "restaurants in Geneva" → returns Geneva's boundary polygon as-is.

Buffer / Proximity

Relation	Behavior	Default distance
near	Circular buffer from centroid	5 km
along	Linear buffer along a feature	500 m
left_bank	Left bank of a linear feature (relative to flow direction)	500 m
right_bank	Right bank of a linear feature (relative to flow direction)	500 m
on_shores_of	Ring buffer around a water boundary, excluding the water body	1 km ring
in_the_heart_of	Negative buffer (erosion) toward center	−500 m

One-sided buffers: left_bank and right_bank produce a buffer on a single side of a linear feature (river, road) relative to its direction of flow.

Ring buffer: on_shores_of uses ring_only=True — the reference geometry itself is subtracted, leaving only the surrounding ring.

Directional

All directional relations produce a 90° sector wedge extending outward from the reference geometry centroid.

Relation	Direction	Default radius
north_of	0°	10 km
northeast_of	45°	10 km
east_of	90°	10 km
southeast_of	135°	10 km
south_of	180°	10 km
southwest_of	225°	10 km
west_of	270°	10 km
northwest_of	315°	10 km

Example: "5km north of Lausanne" → 90° sector polygon extending 5km north from Lausanne's centroid.

Registering Custom Relations

from etter import SpatialRelationConfig, RelationConfig

config = SpatialRelationConfig()
config.register_relation(RelationConfig(
    name="close_to",
    category="buffer",
    description="Very close proximity, under 1km",
    default_distance_m=1000,
    buffer_from="center",
))

See SpatialRelationConfig and RelationConfig for all available options.

Querying Available Relations

# All relations
parser.get_available_relations()

# By category
parser.get_available_relations(category="directional")

# Description of a specific relation
parser.describe_relation("on_shores_of")