MBUtil

MBUtil is a utility for importing and exporting the MBTiles format, typically created with Mapbox TileMill.

Before exporting tiles to disk, see if there's a Mapbox Hosting plan or an open source MBTiles server implementation that works for you - tiles on disk are notoriously difficult to manage.

Note well: this project is no longer actively developed. Issues and pull requests will be attended to when possible, but delays should be expected.

Installation

Git checkout (requires git)

git clone https://github.com/mapbox/mbutil.git
cd mbutil
# get usage
./mb-util -h

Then to install the mb-util command globally:

sudo python setup.py install
# then you can run:
mb-util

Python installation (requires easy_install)

easy_install mbutil
mb-util -h

Usage

$ mb-util -h
Usage: mb-util [options] input output

Examples:

    Export an mbtiles file to a directory of files:
    $ mb-util world.mbtiles tiles # tiles must not already exist

    Import a directory of tiles into an mbtiles file:
    $ mb-util tiles world.mbtiles # mbtiles file must not already exist

Options:
  -h, --help            Show this help message and exit
  --scheme=SCHEME       Tiling scheme of the tiles. Default is "xyz" (z/x/y),
                        other options are "tms" which is also z/x/y
                        but uses a flipped y coordinate, and "wms" which replicates
                        the MapServer WMS TileCache directory structure "z/000/000/x/000/000/y.png"''',
                        and "zyx" which is the format vips dzsave --layout google uses.
  --image_format=FORMAT
                        The format of the image tiles, either png, jpg, webp or pbf
  --grid_callback=CALLBACK
                        Option to control JSONP callback for UTFGrid tiles. If
                        grids are not used as JSONP, you can
                        remove callbacks specifying --grid_callback=""
  --do_compression      Do mbtiles compression
  --silent              Dictate whether the operations should run silently


Export an `mbtiles` file to files on the filesystem:

    mb-util World_Light.mbtiles adirectory


Import a directory into a `mbtiles` file

    mb-util directory World_Light.mbtiles

Requirements

• Python >= 2.6

Metadata

MBUtil imports and exports metadata as JSON, in the root of the tile directory, as a file named metadata.json.

{
    "name": "World Light",
    "description": "A Test Metadata",
    "version": "3"
}

Testing

This project uses nosetests for testing. Install nosetests:

pip install nose

or

easy_install nose

Then run:

nosetests

See Also

• node-mbtiles provides mbpipe, a useful utility.
• mbliberator a similar program but in node.

License

BSD - see LICENSE.md

Authors

• Tom MacWright (tmcw)
• Dane Springmeyer (springmeyer)
• Mathieu Leplatre (leplatrem)