PMTiles

[stiltzkin]

I saw this referenced on Hacker News over the weekend and thought you might find it at least interesting, if you aren't already aware of it.

Intro/demo:

Protomaps

The open source map for developers

protomaps.com

Technical explanation:

Dynamic Maps, Static Storage

Update: This post describes the internals of the PMTiles v2 format. Check out the post on PMTiles V3 for the latest! Serverless computing supposedly will let developers run sophisticated applications on the web without wrangling virtual machines or databases. New products like Lambda offer...

protomaps.com

Code:

GitHub - protomaps/PMTiles: Pyramids of map tiles in a single file on static storage

Pyramids of map tiles in a single file on static storage - protomaps/PMTiles

github.com

This is a pretty ingenious approach to building low-cost content delivery for map sites. The article has all the details, but in short: this allows you to store your map tiles in a single static file. That property allows you to better exploit low cost commodity cloud storage (e.g. S3) to host your basemaps. Instead of having to upload, manage, and store tens or hundreds of millions of map tiles, you can just store one compressed file, and the client will seamlessly request byte ranges from that file, more like a video codec. This is done in a way that deduplicates tiles and optimizes for panning and zooming, reducing the number of overall requests. Neat stuff.

 

[Boyd]

Interesting, thanks. Didn't take the time to read much but unless it is explained somewhere else, this system is just for vector tiles:

"Protomaps is built around vector tiles for sharp client-side rendering, customizability, and compatibility"

That would make it useless for me, I don't use vector tiles, only raster imagery. I have some Mapbox vector maps, but don't use this for my own maps. You know, I lost count awhile ago, but believe my own maps are up to over 60 million tiles already. Am planning to increase storage to 2tb soon, so that should double during the coming year. I don't use Amazon. At some point I may look at them again, but I've been using the same small hosting company for over 20 years now. As long as they'll work with me on the cost, I'd rather stay with them instead of further enriching Amazon.

 

[stiltzkin]

Nope, it works for raster tiles as well.

Here's a demo:

PMTiles MapLibre Raster DEM Example

It's explained in the docs (and also in the GitHub link above).

And you should be able to use this with just about any hosting provider, it doesn't have to be Amazon. This demo uses Cloudflare R2.

 

[Boyd]

Thanks. But converting to some completely different system just doesn't interest me.

 

[stiltzkin]

No worries, just posted for your interest. I don't really talk to anybody else who runs a map site.