[ajd555]

Hi HN! This is my first blog, inspired by many posts read here. I attempt to explain how Vector Tiles in GIS tools are constructed from scratch, and how easy it is. This also sets up future blog posts about MapLibre tiles as well as some tricks in the backend to pre-generate the MVT files to serve them up quickly, and update tiles for real time updates on a map. I'll be happy to answer any questions or feedback!

[stevage]

I'm not entirely clear on why you had to go all the way to "from scratch". Are there really no libraries in Go that can generate tiles more conveniently?

(I've been basically a full time freelance Mapbox consultant for the last 7 years. When I'm generating tiles, it's either statically (tippecanoe), through PostGIS, or occasionally using a JavaScript library. Never had to get my hands quite as dirty as you here...)

It is a real shame that Mapbox GL JS doesn't support GeoJSON vector tiles, which makes a lot of this stuff easier. Yes, they're not as compact as PBF, but for ease of development, debuggability etc, they're a great step along the way and flatten the learning curve. (From memory, OpenLayers does support them...)

Also curious whether you looked at https://docs.protomaps.com/pmtiles/

[ajd555]

I have not looked at PMTiles, so far everything holds nicely generated in memory, so I haven't had the need to store this information. I'll keep it in mind.

Any idea why Mapbox GL JS doesn't support GeoJSON vector tiles?

[ajd555]

Honestly, simple curiosity + wanted to keep it in Go

[nilsingwersen]

I understand that you probably wanted to implement this from scratch but did you take a look at tippecanoe? https://github.com/felt/tippecanoe originally by mapbox but got forked by felt.

[jjgreen]

Interesting read, thanks