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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Over 35 recipes to design and implement uniquely styled maps using the Mapbox platform
About This Book
- Design and develop beautifully styled maps using TileMill, MapBox Studio, and CartoCSS
- Get to grips with the mapbox.js and Leaflet to create visually stunning web and mobile applications
- An easy-to-follow, quick reference guide to integrate powerful APIs and services like Foursquare, Fusion Tables, Geoserver, and CartoDB to populate your maps
Who This Book Is For
If you are a web developer seeking for GIS expertise on how to create, style, and publish interactive and unique styled maps, then this book is for you. Basic knowledge of programming and javascripts is assumed.
What You Will Learn
- Get accustomed to the MapBox Editor to visually style your maps
- Learn everything about CartoCSS, and how it will help you fine tune your styled maps
- Use MapBox Studio and Tilemill to generate your own tiles and vector maps
- Publish your maps using a variety of technologies like node.js, PHP, and Geoserver
- Integrate with third party APIs and services to populate your maps with public or private data
- Create many different map visualization styles like choropleth and heat maps, add interactivity, and even learn how to animate data over time
- Work with many different data formats and external services to create robust maps
- Learn to use MapBox GL to create a mobile application
In Detail
Maps are an essential element in today's location aware applications. Right from displaying earth surface information to creating thematic maps displaying plethora of information, most of the developers lack the necessary knowledge to create customizable maps with combination of various tools and libraries. The MapBox platform is one such platform which offers all the tools and API required to create and publish a totally customizable map.
Starting with building your first map with the online MapBox Editor, we will take you all the way to building advanced web and mobile applications with totally customizable map styles. Through the course of chapters we'll learn CartoCSS styling language and understand the various components of MapBox platform and their corresponding JavaScript API.
In the initial few chapters we will dive deeper into the TileMill and MapBox Studio components of MapBox and use them to generate custom styled map tiles and vector maps. Furthermore, we will publish these custom maps using PHP, node.js and third party tools like Geoserver.
We'll also learn to create different visualizations and map styles like a choropleth map, a heat map and add user interactivity using a UFTGrid. Moving on, we dive into advanced concepts and focus on integration with third party services like Foursquare, Google FusionTables, CartoDB, and Torque to help you populate and even animate your maps.
In the final chapter we'll learn to use the Mapbox SDK to create and publish interactive maps for the iOS platform. By the end of this book, you will learn about MapBox GL and how to create a fully functional, location-aware mobile app, using the maps styles created in the recipes.
Style and approach
An easy-to-use recipe driven book that will not just serve code samples, but also explains all the theory and concepts required to fully understand each recipe.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 256
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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Table of Contents
Mapbox Cookbook
Mapbox Cookbook
Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: March 2016
Production reference: 1150316
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
Livery Place
35 Livery Street
Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-78439-735-7
www.packtpub.com
Credits
Author
Bill Kastanakis
Reviewer
Balkan Uraz
Commissioning Editor
Usha Iyer
Acquisition Editors
Vinay Argekar
Shaon Basu
Content Development Editor
Siddhesh Salvi
Technical Editors
Siddhesh Ghadi
Taabish Khan
Copy Editors
Shruti Iyer
Sonia Mathur
Project Coordinator
Nidhi Joshi
Proofreader
Safis Editing
Indexer
Mariammal Chettiyar
Production Coordinator
Conidon Miranda
Cover Work
Conidon Miranda
About the Author
Bill Kastanakis has been a software engineer for over 15 years with experience in desktop, mobile, and web application development. His love for the Mapbox platform came from a project he worked on in 2010 to build a series of iOS tourist guide apps. With maps being simplistic in appearance and their customization options being nearly zero, he discovered the potential of a platform that allows the developer to totally customize the appearance of maps and the experience of using them.
Bill currently owns MindBomb, which specializes in mobile apps for the iOS platform, and he is a cofounder of nCoded+ Limited, which builds enterprise mobile and web applications for casino accounting. He also works as an iOS team lead and architect for one of the most popular apps in Ireland.
Bill often contributes to presentations as well as writing several mobile development blogs about new mobile technologies.
About the Reviewer
Balkan Uraz is a city planner with a master's degree in Geographical Sciences. He has over 18 years of experience in the field of Geographic Information Systems.
Throughout his career, Balkan has worked on several projects with one thing in common: GIS. In the early days of his career, he worked on projects involving municipal GIS and city information systems. He has worked on major LBS projects for mobile operators in Turkey that involve both software development and building data inventories. He cofounded a tech company that specializes in navigation data collection and products. He has also been a GIS consultant for major companies operating in the areas of field tracking and real estate. In all his projects, he has worked around his one passion, which is building up spatial infrastructure.
Balkan is the coauthor of the book Google Maps JavaScript API Cookbook with Alper Dincer, published by Packt Publishing.
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Preface
Maps are an essential element in today's location-aware applications, but they lack variation and customization. The Mapbox platform offers the tools and APIs required to totally customize, populate, and publish a map.
In this book, starting with the basics of Mapbox Editor for your first map styling steps, we will take you all the way to building advanced web and mobile applications with completely customizable map styles. The book focuses on the CartoCSS styling language as well as Mapbox tools and its JavaScript API, which inherits from Leaflet and is one of the most established, robust, and easy-to-use libraries.
We will then introduce two core Mapbox tools: TileMill and Mapbox Studio. Using them, we will generate custom-styled map tiles and vector maps. We will then move on to how to publish your custom maps using PHP, Node.js, and third-party tools such as GeoServer.
The next step is to start using the Mapbox JavaScript API and Leaflet to create different visualization map styles, such as a choropleth map and a heat map, and add user interactivity using UTFGrid.
We will continue with the advanced chapters and focus on integrating with third-party services such as Foursquare, Google Fusion Tables, CartoDB, and Torque to help us populate and even animate our maps.
Finally, we will end the book with a chapter dedicated to mobile devices. You will learn about Mapbox GL and how to create a fully functional, location-aware mobile app, which will use the map styles created in the earlier recipes.
This book is fast-paced, and the recipes are easy to follow. While it focuses on a recipe approach, it dives into the core concepts and theory of the technologies used to help you understand the theory required for GIS, web, and mobile development.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Introduction to Mapbox, shows how to style your own base map using Mapbox Editor, add vector data, and publish your maps.
Chapter 2, Mapbox Services, shows how to use the lower-level Mapbox Web Services API to access data from the Mapbox servers.
Chapter 3, TileMill and Mapbox Studio, shows how to create stunning custom raster and vector maps using TileMill and Mapbox Studio.
Chapter 4, Mapbox.js, is an introduction to the Mapbox JavaScript API. This chapter will show how to create custom layers, add vector and raster data, and create interactivity and custom map styles such as choropleth and heat maps.
Chapter 5, Mapbox.js Advanced, shows how to use external data sources and integrate them with datasets from third-party services.
Chapter 6, Mapbox GL, shows how to create a fully functional mobile app using Mapbox GL for iOS.
What you need for this book
You require the following software:
Who this book is for
Whether you are a web developer looking to dive into the GIS world or a GIS professional looking to create advanced web and mobile applications, this book is for you.
Sections
In this book, you will find several headings that appear frequently (Getting ready, How to do it, How it works, There's more, and See also).
To give clear instructions on how to complete a recipe, we use these sections as follows:
Getting ready
This section tells you what to expect in the recipe, and describes how to set up any software or any preliminary settings required for the recipe.
How to do it…
This section contains the steps required to follow the recipe.
How it works…
This section usually consists of a detailed explanation of what happened in the previous section.
There's more…
This section consists of additional information about the recipe in order to make the reader more knowledgeable about the recipe.
See also
This section provides helpful links to other useful information for the recipe.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "We can include other contexts through the use of the include directive."
A block of code is set as follows:
When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Copy the clipboard copy icon next to the Share textbox."
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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To send us general feedback, simply e-mail <[email protected]>, and mention the book's title in the subject of your message.
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Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.
Downloading the example code
You can download the example code files for this book from your account at http://www.packtpub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit http://www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files e-mailed directly to you.
You can download the code files by following these steps:
Once the file is downloaded, please make sure that you unzip or extract the folder using the latest version of:
Downloading the color images of this book
We also provide you with a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. The color images will help you better understand the changes in the output. You can download this file from https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/MapboxCookbook_ColorImages.pdf.
Errata
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To view the previously submitted errata, go to https://www.packtpub.com/books/content/support and enter the name of the book in the search field. The required information will appear under the Errata section.
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We appreciate your help in protecting our authors and our ability to bring you valuable content.
Questions
If you have a problem with any aspect of this book, you can contact us at <[email protected]>, and we will do our best to address the problem.
Chapter 1. Introduction to Mapbox
In this chapter, we will cover the following recipes:
Introduction
Most websites we visit every day use maps in order to display information about locations or points of interest to the user. It is amazing how this technology has evolved over the past few decades.
In the early days, with the introduction of the Internet, maps were static images. Users were unable to interact with maps as they were limited to just displaying static information. Interactive maps were available only to mapping professionals, accessed via very expensive GIS software. Cartographers used this type of software to create or improve maps, usually for an agency or an organization. Again, if information about a location was to be made available to the public, there were only two options: static images or a printed version.
Improvements in Internet technologies opened up possibilities for interactive content. It was a natural transition for maps to become live, respond to search queries, and allow user interactions, such as panning and changing the zoom level.
Mobile devices were just beginning to evolve, and a new age of smartphones was about to begin. It was natural for maps to become even more important to consumers. Interactive maps are now in their pockets, and more importantly, they can tell a user's location and display a great variety of data.
In an age in which smartphones and tablets have become aware of location, information has become even more important to companies. Smartphones use this information to improve user experience in everything from general-purpose websites such as Google Maps, to more focused apps such as Foursquare and Facebook. Maps are now a crucial component in the digital world.
The popularity of mapping technologies is increasing over the years. A number of services have become available to developers, from free open source solutions to commercial services for web and mobile developers, and even services specialized for cartographers and visualization professionals.
Currently, developers have the option to choose from a variety of services that will work better for their specific tasks. The best part of all is that if some customers have increased traffic requirements, most of them are offered free plans.
Getting started with Mapbox
The issue with most of the solutions available is that they look extremely similar. By observing the most commonly used websites and services that implement a map, you can easily confirm that they completely lack personality.
Maps have the same colors and present the same features, such as roads, buildings, and labels. Currently, displaying road addresses on a specific website doesn't make sense. Customizing maps is a tedious task, and that is the main reason that it's avoided. What if the map provided by a web service does not work well with the color theme used in your website or app?
Mapbox is a service provider that allows users to select from a variety of customization options. This is one of the most popular features that set it apart from its competitors. The power to fully customize your map in every detail, including the color theme, features you want to present to the user, information displayed, and much more, is indispensable. Using the tools provided by Mapbox, you can upload and publish your own datasets and integrate them with Mapbox's own data.
Mapbox provides you with the tools to fully write in CartoCSS, the language behind Mapbox's cartographic customization, SDKs, and frameworks, to integrate their maps into your website with minimal effort, along with a lot more tools to assist you in your task and provide your users with a unique experience.
Data
Let's take a look at what Mapbox has to offer. We will begin with the three available datasets.
Mapbox Streets is the core technology behind Mapbox's street data. It's powered by Open Street Maps and has an extremely vibrant community of 1.5 million voluntary cartographers and users, who constantly refine and improve map data in real time.
Note
For more information regarding the Mapbox and Open Street Maps partnership, visit https://www.mapbox.com/guides/osm-and-mapbox/.
For more information regarding Open Street Maps, visit http://www.openstreetmap.org.
Mapbox Terrain is composed of datasets fetched from 24 other datasets owned by 13 organizations. It enables you to access elevation data, hill shades, and topography lines, as shown in the following figure:
Mapbox Satellite offers high-resolution cloudless datasets with satellite imagery, as shown in the following figure:
Mapbox Editor
Mapbox Editor is an online editor with which you can easily create and customize maps. Its purpose is for you to easily customize the map's color theme by choosing from presets or creating your own styles. Additionally, you can add features such as markers and lines, or define areas using polygons. Maps are also multilingual, and currently there are four different languages as options to choose from while working with Mapbox Editor:
While adding data manually in Mapbox Editor is handy, it also offers the ability to batch import data, and it supports the most commonly used formats.
The user interface is strictly visual. No coding skills are needed in order to create, customize, and present a map. It is ideal if you want to quickly create and share maps. It also supports sharing to all major platforms, such as WordPress, and embedding in forums or websites using IFrames.
CartoCSS
CartoCSS is a powerful open source-style sheet language developed by Mapbox and widely supported by several other mapping and visualization platforms. It's extremely similar to CSS, and if you have ever used CSS, it will be very easy for you to adapt. Take a look at the following code:
TileMill
TileMill is a free open source desktop editor that you can use to write CartoCSS and fully customize your maps. This is done by adding layers of data from various sources and then customizing layer properties using CartoCSS, a CSS-like style sheet language. When you complete the editing of the map, you can export the tiles and upload them to your Mapbox account in order to use the map on your website. TileMill was used as the standard solution for this type of work, but it used raster data. This changed with the introduction of Mapbox Studio, which uses vector data:
Mapbox Studio
Mapbox Studio is the new open source toolbox created by the Mapbox team to customize maps, and the plan is to slowly replace TileMill. The advantage is that it uses vector tiles instead of raster. Vector tiles are superior because they hold infinite detail; they are not dependent on the resolution found in a fixed-size image. You can still use CartoCSS to customize the map, and as with TileMill, you can export and share the map to your website at any point:
API and SDK
Accessing Mapbox data using various APIs is also very easy. You can use JavaScript or WebGL, or simply access the data using REST service calls. If you are into mobile development, separate SDKs are offered to develop native apps for iOS and Android that take advantage of the amazing Mapbox technologies and customization while maintaining a native look and feel.
Mapbox allows you to use your own sources. You can import a custom dataset and overlay the data on Mapbox Streets, Terrains, or satellite base maps. Another feature worth noting is that you are not limited to fetching data from various sources, as you can also query the tile metadata.
Creating your own map
In this recipe, you will be introduced to the core functionality of Mapbox Editor. In the beginning, we will explore the project management dashboard to create a new project. After this, we will use the interactive color picker provided by Mapbox Editor's user interface to help us style our new map.
The power of Mapbox Editor must not be underestimated. The functionality provided allows us to experiment with color schemes and gives our map a unique personality without writing a single line of code. The controls are simple, but at the same time there are options for sophisticated color mixing, making our task easier than ever.
Even if you advance deeper into the book and learn the secrets of CartoCSS, the powerful styling language that powers TillMill and Mapbox Studio, you will often use Mapbox Editor as a scratchpad to experiment with new ideas and color schemes.
Getting ready
To start working with Mapbox, you need to create a user account. This account is needed when you want to create a new project, use the editor, share data, and access the APIs for development; it is used to get a unique access token that you will use in the future when developing using the APIs.
Mapbox offers a free, non-time-limited plan that suffices for the scope of learning Mapbox as long as you do not have any heavy traffic on your published maps. There are limitations, especially when using Mapbox Studio, but you can start with a free plan and upgrade later when needed.
Head over to www.mapbox.com and click on Sign up in the upper-right corner. Follow the instructions to create a new account. After you have created it, simply sign in and select Projects from the menu:
How to do it…
The first step is to create a new project:
How it works…
You can pan simply by dragging the mouse on the map, and zoom using the mouse scroll wheel or the plus and minus buttons in the lower-left corner of the screen. Next to the zoom buttons, there is a handy box showing the current coordinates in latitude and longitude of the region currently on the screen. In the upper-left corner of the screen, you will see your profile picture and several buttons that give you access to the related sections. Next to the profile picture is Style, which is used to select one of the predefined map styles:
You can start customizing your map immediately by selecting one of the available preset styles to get started with a predefined color style. You can select any of the 15 available styles provided by Mapbox.
Note
There was a time when Mapbox allowed us to customize the color theme using Mapbox Editor.
Sadly, this functionality has now been removed, and Mapbox kindly reminds us that we can use Mapbox Studio to customize our maps. Don't worry; in the end, it's much more powerful to do it this way, and we will learn more about it in Chapter 3, TileMill and Mapbox Studio.
Adding vector data
Getting ready
Most of the time, you will be presenting a map in order to guide the user to a specific location. You can add a variety of vector data to your map, which can be markers if you want to show a POI (point of interest) to the user; lines, which represent a route from one location to another; and polygons, which can be used if you want to highlight an entire area.
How to do it…
There are a number of things that we can do with vector data in Mapbox. Here are a few of them.
Creating a marker
The following steps need to be performed:
Creating lines
Mapbox Editor gives you the ability to create lines. Routes, for example, are best represented with lines. Perform the following steps:
