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

[Marco Hugentobler]

Hi Nikolai

Oh sorry, was reading the mail in a rush and meant raster tiles.

I don't have much experience with vector tiles. Afaik, they come without 
symbolisation? If yes, is there a reason why the vector tile serving 
needs to be inside QGIS server?  Or could you just use another 
application that you point to the datasource?
E.g. there is an interesting new project called t-rex 
(https://github.com/pka/t-rex), afaik it supports PBF.

Regards,
Marco

Am 19.06.2016 um 01:51 schrieb 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) or 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


-- 
Dr. Marco Hugentobler
Sourcepole -  Linux & Open Source Solutions
Weberstrasse 5, CH-8004 Zürich, Switzerland
marco.hugentobler at sourcepole.ch http://www.sourcepole.ch
Technical Advisor QGIS Project Steering Committee

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