MBTilesViewer

I also created this bare bones MBTiles cache viewer to view the tile cache in MBTiles format. This application does not do much, just display the tilecache on a map. To view a MBTiles file, just fire up the viewer and start dragging and dropping MBTiles cache files on to it. You can drag and drop multiple MBTiles cache files at the same time if needed. And also, you can create MBTile caches with the TileCutter. The viewer was created using the ESRI WPF map control. If you would like to see this viewer do more, let me know 🙂

MBTilesViewer can be downloaded here.

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TileCutter update – With support for OSM and WMS map services

I just added support for creating MBTiles caches for WMS map services and also to download OSM tiles into the MBTiles format. MBTiles cache for WMS map services would improve map rendering performance, but why did i add support for OSM tile sets? Well, they will come in handy for disconnected/offline use cases. So, here are some usage examples

ArcGIS Dynamic Map Service:

TileCutter.exe -z=7 -Z=9 -x=-95.844727 -y=35.978006 -X=-88.989258 -Y=40.563895 -o=”C:\LocalCache\ags.s3db” -t=agsd -m=”http://server.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/I3_Imagery_Prime_World_2D/MapServer”

WMS Map Service 1.1.1:

TileCutter.exe -z=7 -Z=9 -x=-95.844727 -y=35.978006 -X=-88.989258 -Y=40.563895 -o=”C:\LocalCache\wms111.s3db” -t=wms1.1.1 -m=”http://sampleserver1-350487546.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com/ArcGIS/services/Specialty/ESRI_StateCityHighway_USA/MapServer/WMSServer”

WMS Map Service 1.3.0:

TileCutter.exe -z=7 -Z=9 -x=-95.844727 -y=35.978006 -X=-88.989258 -Y=40.563895 -o=”C:\LocalCache\wms130.s3db” -t=wms1.3.0 -m=”http://sampleserver1-350487546.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com/ArcGIS/services/Specialty/ESRI_StateCityHighway_USA/MapServer/WMSServer”

OSM:

TileCutter.exe -z=7 -Z=9 -x=-95.844727 -y=35.978006 -X=-88.989258 -Y=40.563895 -o=”C:\LocalCache\osm.s3db” -t=osm -m=”http://tile.openstreetmap.org”

And always just type “TileCutter -h” for usage information.

Want to customize the parameters with which the maps are being generated? Just use the “-s” command line option ans specify the setting in a query string format.

TileCutter.exe -z=7 -Z=9 -x=-95.844727 -y=35.978006 -X=-88.989258 -Y=40.563895 -o=”C:\LocalCache\ags.s3db” -t=agsd -m=”http://server.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/I3_Imagery_Prime_World_2D/MapServer” -s=”transparent=true&format=jpeg”

Also, if some of the tile requests result in errors, the level, column, row and error message information would be logged into a text file in the same directory as the MBTiles cache.

And now, for the best new feature of TileCutter, the program does not store duplicate tiles. That is, if the area you are caching has a lot of empty tiles in the ocean etc, the MBTiles cache created by TileCutter will only store one tile for all those duplicated tile images. Should help save disk space 🙂

TileCutter can be downloaded here

TileCutter – A small utility to generate tile cache in the MBTiles format from ArcGIS Dynamic Map Services

Thought I would share a little utility I had written up to generate tile caches in the MBTiles format for ArcGIS Dynamic Map Services. The MBTiles cache format is very simple and makes moving caches between machines very easy since you just have to transfer one file instead of the thousands of files that need to be copied for normal tile caches. The TileCutter is a console utility and accepts the scale range and the extent in latitude/longitude for which the cache should be generated. It also takes a few other options listed below.

Options:
  -h, --help                 Show this message and exits
  -m, --mapservice=VALUE     Url of the ArcGIS Dynamic Map Service to be
                               cached
  -o, --output=VALUE         Location on disk where the tile cache will be
                               stored
  -z, --minz=VALUE           Minimum zoom scale at which to begin caching
  -Z, --maxz=VALUE           Maximum zoom scale at which to end caching
  -x, --minx=VALUE           Minimum X coordinate value of the extent to cache
  -y, --miny=VALUE           Minimum Y coordinate value of the extent to cache
  -X, --maxx=VALUE           Maximum X coordinate value of the extent to cache
  -Y, --maxy=VALUE           Maximum Y coordinate value of the extent to cache
  -p, --parallelops=VALUE    Limits the number of concurrent operations run
                               by TileCutter
  -r, --replace=VALUE        Delete existing tile cache MBTiles database if
                               already present and create a new one.

Example Usage:

To just try it out, just run TileCutter.exe, it will download tiles for some default extents from an ESRI sample server

TileCutter -z=7 -Z=10 -x=-95.844727 -y=35.978006 -X=-88.989258 -Y=40.563895 -o=”C:\LocalCache” -m=”http://sampleserver1.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/Demographics/ESRI_Population_World/MapServer”

The TileCutter does request tiles in parallel threads and allows to you controls the number of concurrent operations. I don’t want to write too much about it yet since i am still working to add more capabilities to it. I am planning on providing the ability to generate MBTile caches for WMS services, OSM tiles etc in the future and more if there is interest. Also, planning on implementing  a way to avoid storing duplicate tiles(for example, empty tiles in the ocean etc). I just wanted to get the tool out there early to get feedback and guage interest. So, if you have queries/interest/feature requests, let me know 🙂

Also, I will blog about a little piece of code for a IHttpHandler that will serve up the MBTiles to web clients pretty soon. Stay tuned…

TileCutter can be download here.