[Qgis-developer] Any plans for implementing vector tile generation on QGIS Server?

[Nikolai Bezdna]

Hi Marco,

As far as I know vector tiles can’t be generated out of WMS services, because WMS spec is mostly used for getting raster images (GetMap request) or feature information (GetFeatureInfo request) and some others. 
I guess you meant WFS really, but I don’t know any caching server implementations that use WFS as a background and generate vector tiled PBFs (particularly in Mapbox Vector Tiles spec <https://github.com/mapbox/vector-tile-spec>). 
I didn’t use MapServer MapCache <http://www.mapserver.org/mapcache/>, but according to the docs it doesn’t support vector tiles, only raster ones. MapProxy and TileCache don’t support them either. TileStache can produce vector tiles out of OGR datasource, but in GeoJSON format, which is way heavier than PBF, even gzipped.
So the good way to go would be to use the OGR MVT driver, but unfortunately it’s not released and the status of it’s development is unknown. While web is moving fast towards in-browser rendering (OpenLayers3 and Mapbox GL already utilise WebGL for that) it’s becoming clear QGIS server should support vector tiles at some point. Should I start with a feature request maybe?

Regards,
Nick

From: Marco Hugentobler <marco.hugentobler at sourcepole.ch <mailto:marco.hugentobler at sourcepole.ch>>
To: qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org <mailto:qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org>
Subject: Re: [Qgis-developer] Any plans for implementing vector tile
	generation on QGIS Server?
Message-ID: <5765066C.3000905 at sourcepole.ch <mailto:5765066C.3000905 at sourcepole.ch>>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"

Hi Nikolai

Most vector tile generators can work with any WMS in the background. 
E.g. using MapCache with QGIS server should be perfectly possible.

Regards,
Marco

On 06/18/16 10:13, Nikolai Bezdna wrote:
> I’d like to know if there are any plans for enabling serving vector 
> tiles from QGIS Server, so they can be used in client libraries like 
> Mapbox GL afterwards. Seems like GDAL (OGR really) MVT driver is stuck 
> in development and there already are some stand-alone implementations, 
> like utilery (https://github.com/tilery/utilery <https://github.com/tilery/utilery>) or Mapnik vector tile 
> (https://github.com/mapbox/mapnik-vector-tile <https://github.com/mapbox/mapnik-vector-tile>), but nothing is 
> integrated with QGIS server. Since Mapbox and ESRI adopted MVT, and 
> most major web basemaps (like Google, Apple etc.) are already vector 
> tile based, it seems like QGIS is running a bit behind in this field. 
> So it would be great to start a discussion on utilising vector tile 
> spec within QGIS.
> 
> Cheers
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