Shapefile

The Shapefile format is a widely used vector format for geographic data, introduced by Esri in the 1990s. A "shapefile" is in practice a set of files: at minimum .shp (geometry), .shx (index), and .dbf (attributes). Optional are .prj (coordinate system), .cpg (character encoding), and index files for spatial querying.

The format supports points, lines, and polygons (including multi-part), but not multiple geometry types in one file. Attributes are stored in the DBF part, with limits on field name length and number of fields. Coordinate systems are not stored in the .shp file itself; the .prj often contains a WKT description of the CRS.

Shapefiles are still common in GIS workflows, government data, and exchange with legacy systems. They are supported by almost all desktop and many web GIS tools. Drawbacks include the legacy structure, lack of proper null values, file size limits, and the fact that one logical layer is spread across multiple files, which can cause errors when moving or sharing.

For new projects and web applications, GeoJSON or GeoPackage is often recommended. For integration with Dutch sources such as PDOK, data is often offered as Shapefile alongside WFS and GeoJSON; in uploads to GeoApps and similar platforms, Shapefile is a supported import format.