How to create your own vector tile web maps

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Nowadays, there has been an industry standard process for creating your own vector tile web maps.

This document show that process as step by step.

TL;DR

Read the Dockerfile and Makefile of this repository

GitHub - yuiseki/vector-tile-builder

Abstruct

1. Get *.pbf of OpenStreetMap

2. Generate *.pbf -> *.mbtiles as MBTiles with OpenMapTiles schema

3. Generate *.mbtiles -> /{z}/{x}/{y}/*.pbf

4. Deploy /{z}/{x}/{y}/*.pbf to server

5. Write TileJSON file of your vector tile server and deploy to server

6. Write Mapbox style specification file (style.json) to styling and displaying your vector tiles

7. Write HTML/CSS/JS that load and draw the maps based on style.json

Befor to begin

What is vector tile? What is so convenient about it? How should I make it?

There is a good document on GitHub repository of tilemaker

tilemaker/VECTOR_TILES.md at master · systemed/tilemaker · GitHub

Point is below

Vector tile is a binary data format for digital maps

Vector tile has just only data of geometry and attributes

Maps based on vector tile will rendering by browser (or application), based on those geometry and attributes data with style definition

That means vector tile has capability to flexibly customize appearance at rendering time

Digital maps based on image can not change appearance after once generated images

When we want to provide multiple appearance maps, It will require a huge amount of image data

This is advantage of vector tile

Basically, Vector tile has no detailed rule about the data attributes, But there is industry standard data scheme

That is OpenMapTiles scheme

We need standard data scheme, Because vector tile file format is too flexible to styling maps by ourself

There is a lot of open source style difinition based on OpenMapTiles scheme

We should be riding on the shoulders of giants

Reference

GitHub - mapbox/vector-tile-spec: Mapbox Vector Tile specification

Open vector tile schema for OpenStreetMap layers

Get *.pbf of OpenStreetMap

Visit https://download.geofabrik.de/

Select region you want to create maps

Download *.pbf file

NOTE:

What is this site?

Geofabrik is a company for-profit based on using OpenStreetMap data, but also they offers many free services to the OpenStreetMap community

download.geofabrik.de is, Amazingly, provide the free download server of snapshot data of OpenStreetMap of whole Earth scale

What is the pbf file?

pbf is abbreviation word and file extension of Protocol Buffers data

Refecence

Protocol Buffers | Google Developers

Generate *.pbf -> *.mbtiles as MBTiles with OpenMapTiles schema

I recommend to use tilemaker

GitHub - systemed/tilemaker: Make OpenStreetMap vector tiles without the stack

This software has capabilities to generate MBTiles with OpenMapTiles schema from OpenStreetMap pbf file without database

Get source code of tilemaker

code:bash

git clone git@github.com:systemed/tilemaker.git

cd tilemaker

If you can successfully make tilemaker, the command you should run is below:

code:bash

tilemaker --input tmp/region.pbf --output tmp/region.mbtiles

I know that make tilemaker is quite difficult...

You can use Docker to make tilemaker. I recommend this way

code:bash

make clean # dont forget clean if you have tried to make tilemaker on host machine!

docker build . -t tilemaker

docker run --rm --mount type=bind,source=$(CURDIR)/tmp,target=/tmp tilemaker --input /tmp/region.pbf --output /tmp/region.mbtiles

If you want to more customize your maps, read the docs of tilemaker

tilemaker/CONFIGURATION.md at master · systemed/tilemaker · GitHub

NOTE:

What is the MBTiles file?

MBTiles is the file format of storing tilesets

In fact, MBTiles file is one of SQLite database file that has some rules for storing tilesets

Reference

GitHub - mapbox/mbtiles-spec: specification documents for the MBTiles tileset format

MBTiles | Help | Mapbox

Generate *.mbtiles -> /{z}/{x}/{y}/*.pbf

I'm using tippecanoe

GitHub - mapbox/tippecanoe: Build vector tilesets from large collections of GeoJSON features.

Get source code of tippecanoe

code:bash

git clone git@github.com:mapbox/tippecanoe.git

cd tippecanote

Make tippecanoe

If you can successfully make tippecanoe, the command you should run is below:

code:bash

tile-join --force --no-tile-compression --no-tile-size-limit --no-tile-stats --output-to-directory=docs/zxy path/to/region.mbtiles

I know that make tippecanoe is quite difficult...

You can use Docker to make tippecanoe. I recommend this way

code:bash

make clean

docker build -t tippecanoe .

docker run -it --rm --mount type=bind,source=$(CURDIR)/tmp,target=/tmp tippecanoe tile-join --force --no-tile-compression --no-tile-sizelimit --no-tile-stats --output-to-directory /tmp/zxy /tmp/region.mbtiles

cp -r tmp/zxy docs/

NOTE:

What is this step?

In fact, you can serve directory MBTiles file as vector tile server

But that will require keep running some application server that dynamically convert MBTiles to /{z}/{x}/{y}/*.pbf

Deploy /{z}/{x}/{y}/*.pbf to server

I'm using GitHub Pages

For simplify, you might be generate zxy files under the directory that named like docs/zxy/{z}/{x}/{y}/*.pbf

docs directory has special meanings on GitHub

You can directly deploy contents of this directory as a GitHub Pages

Dont forget: You must change settings of Pages section of your GitHub repository to publish docs directory

Write TileJSON file of your vector tile server and deploy to server

You can use mbtiles2tilejson

code:bash

npm i -g mbtiles2tilejson

mbtiles2tilejson tmp/region.mbtiles --url https://your-github-username.github.io/your-repo-name/zxy/ > docs/tiles.json

Write Mapbox style specification file (style.json) to styling and displaying your vector tiles

I'm using osm-bright-gl-style based style.json that has fixed glyphs issue

vector-tile-builder/style.json at main · yuiseki/vector-tile-builder · GitHub

I recommend copy this style.json

Write HTML/CSS/JS that load and draw the maps based on style.json

code:docs/index.html

<!DOCTYPE html>

<head>

<title>Vector tile builder Demo</title>

<link

href="https://unpkg.com/maplibre-gl@1.15.2/dist/maplibre-gl.css"

rel="stylesheet"

<style>

html,

body,

#map {

width: 100vw;

height: 100vh;

padding: 0;

margin: 0;

}

</style>

</head>

<body>

(async () => {

let map;

const res = await fetch("./tiles.json");

const tilejson = await res.json();

const bounds = tilejson.bounds;

const center = tilejson.center

? tilejson.center

: [(bounds0 + bounds2) / 2, (bounds1 + bounds3) / 2];

const zoom = (tilejson.minzoom + tilejson.maxzoom) / 2;

console.log(center, zoom);

map = new maplibregl.Map({

container: "map",

style: "./style.json",

center: center,

zoom: 5,

});

map.addControl(new maplibregl.NavigationControl());

map.addControl(

new maplibregl.AttributionControl({

compact: false,

customAttribution:

})

);

})();

</script>

</body>

</html>