GeoDjango GEOSException error

It appears that this has been fixed in Django as of last March or so. See also Django bug 20036. So upgrading to Django 1.5.4 will solve the problem.

In the latest GEOS install, the above answer didn’t work… but was close to the problem.

I changed the regex right above the geos_version_info():
from:

version_regex = re.compile(r'^(?P<version>(?P<major>d+).(?P<minor>d+).(?P<subminor>d+))((rc(?P<release_candidate>d+))|dev)?-CAPI-(?P<capi_version>d+.d+.d+)$')

to be:

version_regex = re.compile(r'^(?P<version>(?P<major>d+).(?P<minor>d+).(?P<subminor>d+))((rc(?P<release_candidate>d+))|dev)?-CAPI-(?P<capi_version>d+.d+.d+).*$')

Notice the .* added to the end of the regex.

I think this is broken again. A recent upgrade on our FreeBSD server led to this error:

django.contrib.gis.geos.error.GEOSException: Could not parse version info string "3.6.2-CAPI-1.10.2 4d2925d6"

Looks like the regex in Django’s libgeos.py needs to be updated again to account for this different syntax. Nachopro’s solution still serves as a workaround.

This can be fixed by trying the following,

brew switch geos 3.6.1

For those folks who don’t have 3.6.1 previously installed:

1. brew unlink geos
2. Install 3.6.1 with brew install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/145b22e8330e094ee148861e72e26c03e73d34a1/Formula/geos.rb.
3. brew info geos should show 3.6.1 starred:
   

I fixed the issue by installing PostGIS with Postgres using https://postgresapp.com/downloads.html.

1. Install PostGIS (2.2): brew install postgis
2. To unlink geos if version is higher than 3.6.1: brew unlink geos
3. Install Geos (3.6.1): brew install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/145b22e8330e094ee148861e72e26c03e73d34a1/Formula/geos.rb
4. Switch geos version(latest version is 3.7.2 which is not supported by Django 1.11.3): brew switch geos 3.6.1
5. Login to database and create postgis extensions: CREATE EXTENSION postgis;
   Test postgis extension: SELECT ST_Distance(‘LINESTRING(-122.33 47.606, 0.0 51.5)’::geography, ‘POINT(-21.96 64.15)’::geography);
6. Check postgis version: SELECT PostGIS_full_version();

Brew just released geos 3.8.0 that of course breaks Django 1.11 again.
The previous version, 3.7.3, was oh so very helpfully cleared by the all new all automatic cleanup now running on upgrades, so no brew switch geos 3.7.3 for me.

I ended up using this post to understand how to find the previous version number and commit hash:

cd $( brew --prefix )/Homebrew/Library/Taps/homebrew/homebrew-core
git log -- Formula/geos.rb | less
# find the version you need in the file, copy its hash
brew unlink geos
brew install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/<yourcommithash>/Formula/geos.rb

After all this, the download for geos 3.7.3 fails SHA256 checksum validation for some reason… so I ended up trying 3.7.2, that actually worked.

For now the command to reinstall 3.7.2 on Catalina is:

brew install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/823b700ab61eeec57f34d50be2cc34a285fb5abc/Formula/geos.rb

If one cannot for any reason edit the site packages themselves, this ugly hack did it for me without having to act on the environment itself:

try:
    __import__('django.contrib.gis.geos.libgeos', fromlist=['version_regex'])
except Exception as e:
    import re
    att = __import__('django.contrib.gis.geos.libgeos', fromlist=['version_regex'])
    setattr(att, 'version_regex', re.compile(
      '^(?P<version>(?P<major>\d+)\.(?P<minor>\d+)\.(?P<subminor>\d+))((rc(?P<release_candidate>\d+))|dev)?-CAPI-(?P<capi_version>\d+\.\d+\.\d+)( r\d+)?( \w+)?.*$'))
    assert str(type(e)) == "<class 'django.contrib.gis.geos.error.GEOSException'>", str(e)

It is based on JayCrossler’s answer.

Update

The above executes code found within the django.contrib.gis.geos.__init__.py module, which already tries to use the problematic part, rendering the above solution unusable (for python 2.7+). This can be worked around as:

import sys
try:
    import django.contrib.gis.geos.libgeos
except Exception as e:
    import re
    setattr(sys.modules['django.contrib.gis.geos.libgeos'],'version_regex', re.compile(
        '^(?P<version>(?P<major>\d+)\.(?P<minor>\d+)\.(?P<subminor>\d+))((rc(?P<release_candidate>\d+))|dev)?-CAPI-(?P<capi_version>\d+\.\d+\.\d+)( r\d+)?( \w+)?.*$'))
    assert str(type(e)) == "<class 'django.contrib.gis.geos.error.GEOSException'>", str(e)

Where basically we are acting directly on the module in sys.modules instead of trying to get it from another import that will fail.