Host Terrain RGB tiles on server

In this section, we are going to host terrain RGB raster tileset which we generated in previous section.

For hosting tiles, you will have two choices.

1. Host tiles on Github pages
2. Host tiles on your own server

1. Host tiles on Github pages

In Rwanda’s case, our size of tilesets are below 1GB, so we hosted it on our Github pages.

• Create Github repository

We named rw-terrain as our hosted repository on Github.

• Clone it to your local machine

git clone git@github.com:WASAC/rw-terrain.git
cd rw-terrain

• Move tiles folder under docs directory.

mkdir docs
cd docs
mv ../../dem2terrainrgb/data/tiles tiles

You may delete unnecessary *.html files from tiles folder.

• Create metadata.json under tiles folder

vi metadata.json

{
  "name": "Rwanda 10m Terrain RGB Tileset",
  "description": "Rwanda 10m Terrain RGB Tileset, CC-BY-4.0: Water and Sanitation Corporation (WASAC), Rwanda",
  "version": "1"
}

• Create LICENSE file under root directory

We are using Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may copy our license file to your repository.

cd ..
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WASAC/rw-terrain/main/LICENSE

• Create README.md

Finally, do not forget to write README.md for users. You may modify our [README.md(https://github.com/WASAC/rw-terrain/blob/main/README.md) for your data.

• Configure Github pages

Now, you can push this repository to Github, then please configure Github pages setting.

You can access tilesets from the below URL.

https://wasac.github.io/rw-terrain/tiles/{z}/{x}/{y}.png

2. Host tiles on your own server

Create mbtiles from raster tilesets

If you want to host tilesets on your own server, first you need to create mbtiles container by using mb-utils tool.

Go back to dem2terrainrgb repository folder.

cd ~/dem2terrainrgb

Then, create metadata.json under tiles directory.

vi tiles/metadata.json

{
  "name": "Rwanda 10m Terrain RGB Tileset",
  "description": "Rwanda 10m Terrain RGB Tileset, CC-BY-4.0: Water and Sanitation Corporation (WASAC), Rwanda",
  "version": "1"
}

Finally, you can execute mb-utils to create mbtiles under tilesets folder.

mb-util --image_format=png --scheme=xyz ./tiles/ ./tilesets/rwanda_dem_EPSG3857_10m.mbtiles

Hosting on mbtileserver

You may be able to use mbtilesserver.

After installing mbtileserver,

~/go/bin/mbtileserver --verbose

it will automatically find mbtiles under tilesets folder, then access to http://localhost:8000/services. You will see the following response.

[
    {
        "imageType": "png",
        "url": "http://localhost:8000/services/rwanda_dem_EPSG3857_10m",
        "name": "Rwanda 10m Terrain RGB Tileset"
    }
]

After that, continue to access http://localhost:8000/services/rwanda_dem_EPSG3857_10m and see more detailed information.

{
    "description": "Rwanda 10m Terrain RGB Tileset, CC-BY-4.0: Water and Sanitation Corporation (WASAC), Rwanda",
    "format": "png",
    "map": "http://localhost:8000/services/rwanda_dem_EPSG3857_10m/map",
    "maxzoom": 15,
    "minzoom": 5,
    "name": "Rwanda 10m Terrain RGB Tileset",
    "scheme": "xyz",
    "tilejson": "2.1.0",
    "tiles": [
        "http://localhost:8000/services/rwanda_dem_EPSG3857_10m/tiles/{z}/{x}/{y}.png"
    ],
    "version": "1"
}

Tileset URL will be as below.

http://localhost:8000/services/rwanda_dem_EPSG3857_10m/tiles/{z}/{x}/{y}.png

You can use QGIS’s xyz tile layer funciton to validate your tile hosting.