Alpaca Travel offers mapping services for developers to build their own interactive travel maps.
Alpaca Travel is a platform focused on supporting travel content creators. In addition to the embeddable versions of the content, Alpaca offer a set of services to provide access to the data to build your own maps and applications.
View the GraphQL API Documentation
Alpaca provides an interactive client that you can access for resources hosted on the platform. This can be used to interact with features and identify what mapping data is available.
- Mapping Service Interact with mapping resources (Requires API Key)
Itineraries refers to the broad category of content published on the platform, including trails, trips and lists.
- Itinerary Manifest File Access key information such as datasource URL's and viewport camera configurations for displaying maps.
- Working with GeoJSON and Vector Tiles An overview to getting started with GeoJSON and Vector Tiles when working with itineraries.
- Itinerary GeoJSON and Vector Tiles Reference A comprehensive reference for the data available within GeoJSON and Vector Tile representations of Itinerary
The following references can be used to get started with displaying itinerary data for various mapping platforms. Alpaca Travel makes itinerary data available for use in a wide range of mapping platforms.
- Mapbox Building thoroughly customisable maps presenting itineraries using Mapbox
- Leaflet Adding itinerary information to Leaflet
- Google Maps Platform Integrating with Google Maps Platform
- HERE.com Maps for JavaScript Integrating itineraries into the here.com Maps for JavaScript
- ARCGis Maps SDK for JavaScript Working with ARCGis Maps SDK for JavaScript to add a GeoJSONLayer to your ARCGis Maps application
- QGIS Easily view your itinerary data in QGIS by adding a Vector Tile Connection
- SVG Data Working with SVG exports of itineraries such as stylising curved and generalised representations of itineraries.
Alpaca Travel also provides additional hosted vector tile datasets that can be used to enhance the presentation of your maps, such as displaying markers from the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse, displaying Tourism Regions or other ABS data, or loading data from the natural world administrative data.
- Australian Tourism Data Warehouse Accessing and presenting map that draw from the ATDW database with frequently refreshed data
- Australian Tourism Regions Accessing and presenting map that draw tourism regions from the ABS
- Australian Bureau of Statistics Accessing and presenting map information from the ABS dataset, including locality/suburbs, postcodes, tourism regions or electoral regions.
- Natural Earth Present timezones, countries, regions and other administrative information from the natural earth dataset.
You will need to obtain your API Key in order to authenticate your application
requests. Resources will need to include ?accessToken= query parameter with
requests.
Alpaca require correct attribution for using mapping data. This includes at a minimum displaying:
- "Made with Alpaca" with a link to https://www.alpaca.travel/
- "© OpenStreetMap" with a link to https://www.openstreetmap.org/about
Outside of the data embedded within your itinerary mapping data sets, you can
use the feature.properties.id for each feature to obtain additional
information from the Alpaca Travel GraphQL API.
See the the Alpaca Travel GraphQL API documentation for more information on how to request information from the API. This can also be done using the browser 'fetch' function or alternatively using a hosted SDK that can be included in your browser to make fetching requests easier.