encoding/mvt

Package mvt provides functions for encoding and decoding Mapbox Vector Tiles. The interface is defined as:

type Layer struct {
	Name     string
	Version  uint32
	Extent   uint32
	Features []*geojson.Feature
}

func MarshalGzipped(layers Layers) ([]byte, error)
func Marshal(layers Layers) ([]byte, error)

func UnmarshalGzipped(data []byte) (Layers, error)
func Unmarshal(data []byte) (Layers, error)

These function decode the geometry and leave it in the "tile coordinates". To project it to and from WGS84 (standard lon/lat) use:

func (l Layer) ProjectToTile(tile maptile.Tile)
func (l Layer) ProjectToWGS84(tile maptile.Tile)

Encoding example

// Start with a set of feature collections defining each layer in lon/lat (WGS84).
collections := map[string]*geojson.FeatureCollection{}

// Convert to a layers object and project to tile coordinates.
layers := mvt.NewLayers(collections)
layers.ProjectToTile(maptile.New(x, y, z))

// In order to be used as source for MapboxGL geometries need to be clipped
// to max allowed extent. (uncomment next line)
// layers.Clip(mvt.MapboxGLDefaultExtentBound)

// Simplify the geometry now that it's in the tile coordinate space.
layers.Simplify(simplify.DouglasPeucker(1.0))

// Depending on use-case remove empty geometry, those two small to be
// represented in this tile space.
// In this case lines shorter than 1, and areas smaller than 1.
layers.RemoveEmpty(1.0, 1.0)

// encoding using the Mapbox Vector Tile protobuf encoding.
data, err := layers.Marshal() // this data is NOT gzipped.

// Sometimes MVT data is stored and transfered gzip compressed. In that case:
data, err := layers.MarshalGzipped()

Feature IDs

Since GeoJSON ids can be any number or string they won't necessarily map to vector tile uint64 ids. This is a common incompatibility between the two types.

During marshaling the code tries to convert the geojson.Feature.ID to a positive integer, possibly parsing a string. If the number is negative, the id is omitted. If the number is a positive decimal the number is truncated.

For unmarshaling the id will be converted into a float64 to be consistent with how the encoding/json package decodes numbers.