This package provides an interface to Mapblibre Native to render Mapbox GL / Maplibre GL styles to PNG images.
WARNING: this package is under active development and the API may change without notice.
This package is intended to provide a lightweight interface to maplibre-native
for rendering Mapbox GL / Maplibre GL styles to PNG image data using Python.
This is particularly useful for server-side rendering of maps for use in reports.
This package provides only the Python API for interacting with maplibre-native
;
it does not provide higher-level functionality such as a web server or a CLI.
x86_64 and arm64 wheels are available on PyPI:
pip install pymgl
NOTE: x86_64 wheels are not currently available for MacOS.
To verify that pymgl installed correctly, install with the test dependencies and run the included test suite:
pip install pymgl[test]
pytest --pyargs pymgl -v
Windows is not and will not be supported.
To create a map object, you must always provide a Mapbox GL / Maplibre GL style JSON string or URL to a well-known style hosted by Mapbox or Maptiler:
from pymgl import Map
style = """{
"version": 8,
"sources": {
"basemap": {
"type": "raster",
"tiles": ["https://services.arcgisonline.com/arcgis/rest/services/Ocean/World_Ocean_Base/MapServer/tile/{z}/{y}/{x}"],
"tileSize": 256
}
},
"layers": [
{ "id": "basemap", "source": "basemap", "type": "raster" }
]
}"""
map = Map(style, <height=256>, <width=256>, <ratio=1>, <longitude=0>, <latitude=0>, <zoom=0>, <token=None>, <provider=None>)
See the styles section for more information about map styles.
Other than style, all other parameters are optional with default values.
NOTE: style
and ratio
cannot be changed once the instance is constructed.
You can use a well-known style instead of providing a style JSON string, but you must also provide a token and identify the correct provider:
map = Map("mapbox://styles/mapbox/streets-v11", token=<mapbox token>, provider="mapbox")
Valid providers are mapbox
, maptiler
, and maplibre
.
You can set additional properties on the map instance after it is created:
map.setCenter(longitude, latitude)
map.setZoom(zoom)
map.setSize(width, height)
map.setBearing(bearing) # map bearing in degrees
map.setPitch(pitch) # map pitch in degrees
map.setFilter(layerId, filterJSON or None)
map.setPaintProperty(layerId, property, value)
map.setVisibility(layerId, True / False)
You can retrieve these values using attributes, if needed:
map.size # (width, height)
map.center # (longitude, latitude)
map.zoom
map.bearing
map.pitch
You can also retrive information about the map's style or a specific layer:
map.listLayers() # [<layerId1>, ...]
map.listSources() # [<sourceId1>, ...]
map.getFilter(<layerId>) # returns JSON value or None
map.getPaintProperty(<layerId>, <property>) # returns JSON value or None
map.getLayerJSON(<layerId>) # returns JSON describing layer
NOTE: paint properties may be decoded to their internal representation. For
example, a CSS color string #FF0000
will be returned as ["rgba", 255, 0, 0, 1]
.
IMPORTANT: if you are using a remotely-hosted style, you need to force the map to load - which loads all underying assets - before listing the style's layers, sources, or other properties.
map = Map("mapbox://styles/mapbox/streets-v11", token=<mapbox token>, provider="mapbox")
map.listLayers() # []
map.load()
map.listLayers() # [<layerId1>, ...]
Alternatively, you can download the style yourself and provide that as input to the Map, and it will show all layers without requiring a render first. However, not all assets will be loaded until the first render.
from urllib.request import urlopen
url = f"https://api.mapbox.com/styles/v1/mapbox/streets-v11?access_token={MAPBOX_TOKEN}"
with urlopen(url) as r:
style = r.read()
map = Map(style.decode("UTF-8") token=<mapbox token>, provider="mapbox")
map.listLayers() # [<layerId1>, ...]
You can auto-fit the map to bounds instead of using center longitude / lantitude and zoom:
map.setBounds(xmin, ymin, xmax, ymax, <padding=0>)
You can register an image for use with your style by providing an ID, raw image bytes, width, height, pixel ratio, and indicate if it should be interpreted as SDF:
map.addImage("id", img_bytes, width, height, <ratio=1>, <make_SDF=False>)
See the SDF image docs for more information about using SDF images.
You can render the map to PNG bytes:
img_bytes = map.renderPNG()
This returns bytes
containing the RGBA PNG data.
You can render the map to a raw buffer as a numpy array (uint8
dtype):
array = map.renderBuffer()
The array is a sequence of RGBA values for each pixel in the image.
This may be useful if you are going to immediately read the image data into
another package such as Pillow
or pyvips
to combine with other image
operations.
WARNING: you must manually delete the map instance if you assign a new map instance to that variable, or this package will segfault (not yet sure why). This problem does not occur if separate instances are assigned to separate variables.
map = Map(<style>, <width>, <height>)
del map # must manually delete BEFORE creating a new instance assigned to this
map = Map(<style>, <width>, <height>)
For this reason, you should consider using a context manager:
with Map(<style>, <width>, <height>) as map:
map.renderPNG()
You can also use the map instance to directly render to PNG, if you don't need to set other properties on the map instance:
Map(<style>, <width>, <height>).renderPNG()
PyMGL should support basic styles as of Mapbox GL JS 1.13.
Remote tilesets, tile sources, and assets (glyphs, sprites) should be well-supported. These are loaded by the underlying C++ library outside our control. Invalid URLs will generally raise errors. However, network timeouts or incorrect formats may cause the process to crash.
Local MBTiles are supported, but must be provided using an absolute path to the
mbtiles file as the source url
of a tileset; it must resolve to an actual file.
Local MBTiles are denoted with a mbtiles://
URI prefix.
Example:
{
"sources": {
"source_id": {
"url": "mbtiles:///<pymgl_root_dir>/tests/fixtures/geography-class-png.mbtiles",
...
}
},
"layers": [...],
...
}
GeoJSON files and other local file assets are supported, but must be provided using an absolute path to the file source.
Example:
{
"sources": {
"geojson": {
"type": "geojson",
"data": "file:///<pymgl_root_dir>/tests/fixtures/test.geojson"
}
},
"layers": [...],
...
}
WARNING: providing a URI to tiles under the tiles
key of a source is NOT currently supported by Maplibre Native;
attempting to do so will fail.
You must register the image with the map instance before rendering the map. See
map.addImage()
above.
{
"sources": {...},
"layers": [
{
...,
"paint": {
"fill-pattern": "pattern"
}
},
]
}
You can use map images as fill patterns or icon images.
You can add sources and layers dynamically after constructing the map instance:
import json
map = Map("") # construct with empty style
map.addSource("my_id", json.dumps({
"type": "geojson",
"data": {"type": "Point", "coordinates": [0, 0]}
}))
map.addLayer(json.dumps({
"id": "geojson-point",
"source": "geojson",
"type": "circle",
"paint": { ... }
}))
You can get, set, and remove feature state after the map has been loaded.
map = Map(<style with source "exampleSource" and layer "exampleLayer">, ...)
map.load()
map.getFeatureState("exampleSource", "exampleLayer", "0") # returns None
map.setFeatureState("exampleSource", "exampleLayer", "0", "{\"a\": true}")
map.getFeatureState("exampleSource", "exampleLayer", "0") # returns "{\"a\": true}"
# remove the state value for key "a"
map.removeFeatureState("exampleSource", "exampleLayer", "0", "a")
map.render()
map.getFeatureState("exampleSource", "exampleLayer", "0") # returns None
NOTE: features must already have a unique, numeric ID set on each feature. There
is currently no support for promoteId
like in MapLibre GL JS.
IMPORTANT: the map must be loaded before getting or setting feature state. You must manually force a render in order for the map to update feature state after removing a state key
PyMGL does not support alternative projections or 3D terrain.
Developing on MacOS requires the following binary libraries to be installed
via homebrew
:
- cmake
- ninja
- cmake
- ninja-build
- build-essential
- libcurl4-openssl-dev
- libicu-dev
- libpng-dev
- libwebp-dev
- libprotobuf-dev
- libjpeg-turbo8-dev
- libx11-dev
- libegl-dev
- libopengl-dev
- xvfb
To run on Linux, XVFB must also be running; otherwise the process will segfault.
See docker/README.md
for more information.
nanonbind
is used to provide bindings for Python against a C++ class that wraps
maplibre-native
for easier rendering operations.
It is included here as a git submodule, per the installation instructions.
git submodule add https://github.com/wjakob/nanobind vendor/nanobind
cd vendor/nanobind
git submodule update --init --recursive
Then to upgrade to a specific version of nanobind for development, if needed:
cd vendor/nanobind
git checkout <version tag>
Maplibre Native is included as a git submodule, and it includes many submodules of its own.
git submodule add -b main https://github.com/maplibre/maplibre-native vendor/maplibre-native
Run
git submodule update --init
We only need some of the submodules under maplibre-native. In particular,
we do not need maplibre-gl-js
or Android / IOS dependencies.
Run the following:
cd vendor/maplibre-native
git submodule update --init --recursive \
vendor/boost \
vendor/cpp-httplib \
vendor/earcut.hpp \
vendor/eternal \
vendor/googletest \
vendor/metal-cpp \
vendor/polylabel \
vendor/protozero \
vendor/mapbox-base \
vendor/unique_resource \
vendor/unordered_dense \
vendor/vector-tile \
vendor/wagyu \
vendor/zip-archive
To later update maplibre-native
:
cd vendor/maplibre-native
git checkout main
git pull origin
cd ../..
git commit -am "update maplibre-native" to latest
This package is composed of 2 main parts:
- wrapper around Maplibre Native classes to make constructing and managing properties of the map easier
- Python bindings created using nanobind against that wrapper
The wrapper is located in src/map.cpp
.
See tests/README for more information.
The Python setup.py
script manages building the library and extension using
CMake.
From project root directory:
python setup.py build_ext --inplace
Docstrings are maintained in both src/_pymgl.cpp
and pymgl/__init__.pyi
.
Python-friendly type annotations are maintained in pymgl/__init__.pyi
.
Note: pymgl/__init__.pyi
is necessary to support autocompletion and tooltips
in VSCode.
Most wheels are automatically built by Github when pushing a new version tag. Linux Arm64 wheels must be built locally on an Arm64 machine (e.g., MacOS host).
These are created using the manylinux_2_28 Docker container.
docker build -f ci/Dockerfile.manylinux_2_28_aarch64 -t pymgl-manylinux_2_28_aarch64 .
docker run -v "$PWD/:/app" pymgl-manylinux_2_28_aarch64 ci/build_linux_wheels.sh
This will create aarch64 wheels in dist
that can be uploaded directly to PyPI.
mbgl-renderer provides a NodeJS API, CLI, and server based on the NodeJS bindings to Mapbox GL Native.
This project was developed with the support of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy for use in the Southeast Conservation Blueprint Viewer.
This project is made possible because of the mapbox-gl-native project by Mapbox by the efforts of the Maplibre community maintaining the open-source fork of that project at maplibre-native.