Installing and Using Maputnik, Vector Tile Style Editor.

30 Apr 2018 • Vector Tiles

What is Maputnik?

Maputnik is a vector tile visual style editor that is easy to use, free and open source. It is a style editor with immediate feedback to create Mapbox GL styles using the Mapbox GL style specification. Maputnik does not require a cloud based deployment and will run on your local machine.

Installing Maputnik

  1. Download the latest Maputnik release from here.
    • Under Assets, click on and download public.zip to your local drive.
  2. Move the unzipped contents of public.zip into a directory (i.e $Home/Document/Maputnik/public).
  3. Open your terminal window, and be sure you are in the directory with those contents.
  4. Run your web-server to start the Maputnik style editor: http-server -p 8000

Using Maputnik

  1. Go open a browser and enter localhost:8000 to start styling vector tiles with Maputnik. screen shot

  2. Select a basemap style to choose from Gallery Styles screen shot

  3. Start Tileserver-gl to serve the previously generated vector tiles.
    • See previous Windows Pro Instructions step 9
    • See previous MacOS Instructions step 8
    • See previous Windows Home Instructions step 9
  4. Load the King County Block Group vector tiles.
  5. Load the data by clicking on Sources
    • Hint: To delete any source, one must remove it from layer list first. screen shot
    • Source ID: Give a name associate with the data
    • Source Type: Select GeoJSON or Vector (TileJSON URL)
    • TIleJSON URL: Copy url of locally hosted vector tile screen shot
  6. Export Style JSON file locally. This includes references to the basemap, and your own styled vector tiles. screen shot

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