Rivers of a country

Rivers are lines tagged waterway=river along the middle of the river bed. Smaller streams are waterway=stream.

The query

[out:json][timeout:60];
area["ISO3166-1"="SI"][admin_level=2]->.si;
way["waterway"="river"](area.si);
out geom;

Run it

Live result from overpass.ch, cached for up to 12 hours. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).

How it works

1. A river is split into many ways; the name tag tells which river each belongs to.
2. The water surface is mapped separately as an area (natural=water with water=river).

Variations

• A whole river as one object: rel["waterway"="river"]["name"="Sava"]; out geom;.
• Rivers and streams: ["waterway"~"^(river|stream)$"] (much bigger).

Run it from your code

curl https://api.overpass.ch/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/interpreter \
  --data-urlencode 'data@query.overpassql'

import requests

query = open("query.overpassql").read()
r = requests.post("https://api.overpass.ch/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/interpreter",
                  data={"data": query}, timeout=120)
r.raise_for_status()
print(r.json()["elements"][:3])

const res = await fetch("https://api.overpass.ch/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/interpreter", {
  method: "POST",
  body: new URLSearchParams({ data: query }),
});
if (!res.ok) throw new Error(await res.text());
console.log(await res.json());

Save the query as query.overpassql. It works the same in Overpass Turbo, QGIS and JOSM.