Questions on serving PMTiles

[jj10133]

Firstly, huge thanks to you @bdon for creating this project. I don't know much about maps but found my way here to learn more...

So I see that we could host a static file on S3 however could it be possible for us to create static files based of Country/States or Provinces? Like the way we have on OSM and Organic Maps?

Also, I was thinking on storing this static files on P2P network (https://github.com/holepunchto), it has a hyperdrive module which could help us distributing static files all over the world and save costs with instant updates however question here how do you manage to keep the data updated? Like is it more of an override for this static files? To be honest I don't know much on how they're even generated...

[bdon]

(moved to discussion)

static files based of Country/States or Provinces?

Yes, use pmtiles extract on a planet .pmtiles as documented here or generate it from raw OSM data as described here

how do you manage to keep the data updated?

There is nothing special about .pmtiles, they are served as static assets just like video, that assumes the HTTP server, hyperdrive or not, supports HTTP Byte Serving, CORS and Entity Tags. If you want to update it you need to overwrite the entire file in-place, just like video; this also depends on the browser using Entity Tags correctly (pmtiles.js does) and the storage server supporting atomic updates.

[jj10133]

Thank you, sorry I have another question:-

• I'm trying to host offline protomaps region on ios, would it be possible to serve them offline and use maplibre?
• Would I need to use only style.json and update the url path to get the pmtile from local directory?

[jj10133]

Found this -> https://maplibre.org/maplibre-native/ios/latest/documentation/maplibre-native-for-ios/pmtiles

[jj10133]

I have added style.json in app directory folder, though not able show maps? Got the json from https://maps.protomaps.com/#flavorName=light&lang=en&map=0.58/0/0

[jj10133]

"sources": { "protomaps": { "type": "vector", "attribution": "<a href=\"https://github.com/protomaps/basemaps\">Protomaps</a> © <a href=\"https://openstreetmap.org\">OpenStreetMap</a>", "url": "pmtiles://file://planet_z6.pmtiles" }

• Changed the url path to point to local files in the same directory as style.json

[jj10133]

No worries finally i have it working on ios, issue was simulator was changing the directory path plus it needed absolute path within the style.json which I managed to got it working.

Thanks though!!!

[jj10133]

Sorry but another question as to why we don't see POI names on maps? is it cause of the styling?

[jj10133]

No worries, I also found the answer to that.

[bdon]

only the light and dark flavors currently show a few POIs, more will be present in upcoming versions.

[jj10133]

@bdon Have another question, at present .pmtiles is just a single file and we would have to hit the server all the time to get the tiles based on x/y/z. However I was thinking of using Hyperdrive (https://github.com/holepunchto/hypercore) to serve this files in P2P fashion so that we don't need to hit the server all the time, I don't know much of maps so question is:-

1. is the single static file made up of many files merged into one across different zoom levels?
2. If there many files merged into one can we split them back? in reverse order into small files or chunck? since this is where hypercore shines with spare replication, where by we can serve all the files but in such way a that we only download the files that we need
3. if we can have small files, i don't how we can use x/y/z/ to get the specific files in this case

[bdon]

is the single static file made up of many files merged into one across different zoom levels?

It is individually compressed tiles. You can use the pmtiles-convert command of the python package to extract individual tiles out of a .pmtiles https://github.com/protomaps/PMTiles/blob/main/python/bin/pmtiles-convert#L48 but this can be millions or more tiles for a large area. If that is your intended storage method then you don't really need the .pmtiles archive format at all.

[jj10133]

Thank you, I was testing out more lately on hypercore and have managed to sparsely replicate on necessary tiles, so we can have this single static files in apps now as well are if they're made in P2P fashion. Hoping to use the single file tomorrow and make the map app available to all users.

Sorry another question, can we have more data to show using the tile you provide or we have to create another tile to have more data within in it?

[jj10133]

• Like POI and other labels

[bdon]

If you want more data you need to modify the http://github.com/protomaps/basemaps/ java program that generates the tiles, the one we distribute is the defaults.

[jj10133]

Like when I compare to OSM site, it shows more data. So would i have to touch planet tiler to add more data?

[jj10133]

Thank you so much

[jj10133]

@bdon Thank you so much for creating and making the map available, I have been successfully able to serve the maps in such a way that users would only need to download the tiles(automatically) once in efficient manner thanks to hypercore.