This tool is an alternative to Mapbox Studio and lets you easily create or update vector tilesets on Mapbox from your CSV files using command line. It can be especially handy if you need to:
- periodically update some vector tileset (e.g. every day updates) using some script
- fine tune zoom levels or other parameters of vector tiles
- overcome Mapbox Studio upload limits
Under the hood the tool is using Mapbox Python API, ogr2ogr and tippecanoe utilites. Just pass your CSV file with WKT geometries, specify some parameters and you are done.
Installation
MapboxUtils is distributed as a Docker image so you need to have Docker platform installed. You can get Docker here.
MapboxUtils is publicly available on Docker hub: https://hub.docker.com/r/clevermaps/mapbox-utils
Use following command to get the image:
docker pull clevermaps/mapbox-utils:latest
Data requirements
- Input file needs to be in CSV format
- Geometry needs to be in WKT format
- Geometry needs to be in WGS84 coordinate system
Typically if you have your geodata in Shapefile format, you can transform it with your favorite GIS tool or you can use ogr2ogr utility with following command:
ogr2ogr -f "CSV" countries_wkt.csv countries.shp -lco GEOMETRY=AS_WKT -t_srs EPSG:4326
Available parameters
| name | mandatory | example | description |
|---|---|---|---|
| inputfile | yes | --inputfile /workdir/countries_wkt.csv | path of the input CSV file with geometry |
| geomcolumn | yes | --geomcolumn wkt | name of geometry column |
| tilesetmapid | no | --tilesetmapid cleveranalytics.14j1fhp2 | Mapbox tilesetmapid. If not specified than random value is generated by Mapbox. Specify in case of updating an existing tileset. |
| tilesetname | no | --tilesetname countries_wkt-02ssft | Mapbox tilesetname. If not than specified than tilesetname is generated as combination of input file name and random hash. Specify in case of updating an existing tileset or if you need your own tilesetname. |
| layername | no | --layername countries_wkt | Mapbox layername. If not specified than same value as tilesetname is used. Specify in case of updating an existing tileset or if you need your own layername. |
| minzoom | no | --minzoom 5 | Minimal zoom of the tileset |
| maxzoom | no | --maxzoom 15 | Maximal zoom of the tileset |
fields | no | --fields "id:integer;name:string" | Specify fields and their types to be in the tileset |
| mbtiles_params | no | --mbtiles_params "drop-fraction-as-needed extend-zooms-if-still-dropping" | Parameters of MBTiles generation internally used by tippecanoe. Parameters can be found here https://github.com/mapbox/tippecanoe |
| mapboxtoken | yes | --mapboxtoken abcdefgah1234 | Your Mapbox account token. Token needs to have following priviliges: TILESETS:WRITE, TILESETS:READ, TILESETS:LIST, UPLOADS:READ, UPLOADS:WRITE. Check https://docs.mapbox.com/help/how-mapbox-works/access-tokens/ for more information. |
Running MapboxUtils
Create a new tileset without specifying tilesetname or layername
docker run -t -v /home/user/clevermaps/mapbox-utils:/workdir clevermaps/mapbox-utils:latest --inputfile /workdir/countries_wkt.csv --geomcolumn wkt --minzoom 5 --maxzoom 15 --fields "id:integer;name:string" --mapboxtoken abcdefgah1234
Create a new tileset and specify tilesetname and layername
docker run -t -v /home/user/clevermaps/mapbox-utils:/workdir clevermaps/mapbox-utils:latest --inputfile /workdir/countries_wkt.csv --geomcolumn wkt --minzoom 5 --maxzoom 15 --fields "id:integer;name:string" --mapboxtoken abcdefgah1234 --tilesetname countries_wkt --layername countries_wkt
Update existing tileset
docker run -t -v /home/user/clevermaps/mapbox-utils:/workdir clevermaps/mapbox-utils:latest --inputfile /workdir/countries_wkt.csv --geomcolumn wkt --minzoom 5 --maxzoom 15 --fields "id:integer;name:string" --mapboxtoken abcdefgah1234 --tilesetmapid cleveranalytics.14j1fhp2 --tilesetname countries_wkt-02ssft --layername countries_wkt