Vectipy

Simple Mapbox Vector Tiles (MVT) server with Flask and PostGIS.

MVT are a simple and conveniant way to share geodata using webmap or GIS software.

For webmap : instead GeoJson file, MVT are loaded on the fly, so you can easly add maplayer with hundreds of geometry. Geometry are generalized in higher zoom.

For GIS : Recents releases of QGIS natively support MVT, which can be used like WFS.

Quickstart

⚠️ You need a fonctionnal PostGIS (>2.4) base.

Clone the repo, create a virtual python environment and install requierements

git clone git@github.com:jbdesbas/vectipy.git

cd vectipy

virtualenv -p python3 venv

source venv/bin/activate

pip install -r requirements.txt

Create a .env file with your credentials or export them

export PG_HOST=my_db_host
export PG_PORT=5432
export PG_DATABASE=my_db_name
export PG_USER=my_db_user
export PG_PASSWORD=my_db_password

Enjoy !

python vectipy.py run -p 5000

Use following routes

• http://localhost:5000/ Show availables layers
• http://localhost:5000/MY_LAYER.json TileJSON file
• http://localhost:5000/MY_LAYER/{z}/{x}/{y}.pbf Tiles endpoints
• http://localhost:5000/map/MY_LAYER Layer preview
• http://localhost:5000/map/MY_LAYER.geojson GeoJson file (for download or webmap)

Notes

• Add a geometry index on each layer greatly improve performances (CREATE INDEX my_layer_geom_3857_idx ON my_layer USING GIST (ST_Transform(geom, 3857)) );
• Preview only avaible for constrained geometry type (see https://postgis.net/docs/using_postgis_dbmanagement.html#Manual_Register_Spatial_Column )
• Install gunicorn (pip install gunicorn) and use gunicorn vectipy:app for production

Configuration

Tables with a geometric column are automatically serverd by Vectipy. I suggest to disable this in config.toml and explicitly configure layers that you want to serve.

Layers definition

You can define Layers or Collections (multi-layers tiles)

[[collection]] #a multi-layers tileset
  name = "my_multilayers_tiles" #the collection name, used in tiles url
    [[collection.layer]]
      name = "first_layer" #layer name (published name, used for style definition)
      table_name = "table1" #database table name
      minzoom = 14 #OPTIONAL
      maxzoom = 20 #OPTIONAL
      columns = [ "id", "label"] #OPTIONAL published columns (default : all columns)
      geometry_column = "geom" #geometry column (default : geom)

    [[collection.layer]]
      name = "second_layer"
      table_name = "table2"

[[layers]] #a single-layer tileset
  table_name = "my_single_layer"
  name = "my_table"

Features :

• Easy to deploy MVT (pbf) server
• TileJson metadata
• Frontend preview with MapLibre GL
• Serve GeoJSON file
• Cache system
• OGC API Features (WFS 3) server https://www.ogc.org/standards/ogcapi-features