Provided by: tippecanoe_2.53.0-1_amd64 
Intent
The goal of Tippecanoe is to enable making a scale-independent view of your data, so that at any level
from the entire world to a single building, you can see the density and texture of the data rather than a
simplification from dropping supposedly unimportant features or clustering or aggregating them.
If you give it all of OpenStreetMap and zoom out, it should give you back something that looks like "All
Streets ⟨http://benfry.com/allstreets/map5.html⟩" rather than something that looks like an Interstate
road atlas.
If you give it all the building footprints in Los Angeles and zoom out far enough that most individual
buildings are no longer discernable, you should still be able to see the extent and variety of
development in every neighborhood, not just the largest downtown buildings.
If you give it a collection of years of tweet locations, you should be able to see the shape and relative
popularity of every point of interest and every significant travel corridor.
Installation
The easiest way to install tippecanoe on OSX is with Homebrew ⟨http://brew.sh/⟩:
$ brew install tippecanoe
On Ubuntu it will usually be easiest to build from the source repository:
$ git clone https://github.com/felt/tippecanoe.git
$ cd tippecanoe
$ make -j
$ make install
See Development ⟨#development⟩ below for how to upgrade your C++ compiler or install prerequisite
packages if you get compiler errors.
Usage
$ tippecanoe -o file.mbtiles [options] [file.json file.json.gz file.fgb ...]
If no files are specified, it reads GeoJSON from the standard input. If multiple files are specified,
each is placed in its own layer ⟨#input-files-and-layer-names⟩.
The GeoJSON features need not be wrapped in a FeatureCollection. You can concatenate multiple GeoJSON
features or files together, and it will parse out the features and ignore whatever other objects it
encounters.
Try this first
If you aren't sure what options to use, try this:
$ tippecanoe -zg -o out.mbtiles --drop-densest-as-needed in.geojson
The -zg option will make Tippecanoe choose a maximum zoom level that should be high enough to reflect the
precision of the original data. (If it turns out still not to be as detailed as you want, use -z manually
with a higher number.)
If the tiles come out too big, the --drop-densest-as-needed option will make Tippecanoe try dropping what
should be the least visible features at each zoom level. (If it drops too many features, use -x to leave
out some feature attributes that you didn't really need.)
Examples
Create a tileset of TIGER roads for Alameda County, to zoom level 13, with a custom layer name and
description:
$ tippecanoe -o alameda.mbtiles -l alameda -n "Alameda County from TIGER" -z13 tl_2014_06001_roads.json
Create a tileset of all TIGER roads, at only zoom level 12, but with higher detail than normal, with a
custom layer name and description, and leaving out the LINEARID and RTTYP attributes:
$ cat tiger/tl_2014_*_roads.json | tippecanoe -o tiger.mbtiles -l roads -n "All TIGER roads, one zoom" -z12 -Z12 -d14 -x LINEARID -x RTTYP
Cookbook
Linear features (world railroads), visible at all zoom levels
curl -L -O https://www.naturalearthdata.com/http//www.naturalearthdata.com/download/10m/cultural/ne_10m_railroads.zip
unzip ne_10m_railroads.zip
ogr2ogr -f GeoJSON ne_10m_railroads.geojson ne_10m_railroads.shp
tippecanoe -zg -o ne_10m_railroads.mbtiles --drop-densest-as-needed --extend-zooms-if-still-dropping ne_10m_railroads.geojson
• -zg: Automatically choose a maxzoom that should be sufficient to clearly distinguish the
features and the detail within each feature
• --drop-densest-as-needed: If the tiles are too big at low zoom levels, drop the least-visible
features to allow tiles to be created with those features that remain
• --extend-zooms-if-still-dropping: If even the tiles at high zoom levels are too big, keep adding
zoom levels until one is reached that can represent all the features
Discontinuous polygon features (buildings of Rhode Island), visible at all zoom levels
curl -L -O https://usbuildingdata.blob.core.windows.net/usbuildings-v1-1/RhodeIsland.zip
unzip RhodeIsland.zip
tippecanoe -zg -o RhodeIsland.mbtiles --drop-densest-as-needed --extend-zooms-if-still-dropping RhodeIsland.geojson
• -zg: Automatically choose a maxzoom that should be sufficient to clearly distinguish the
features and the detail within each feature
• --drop-densest-as-needed: If the tiles are too big at low or medium zoom levels, drop the
least-visible features to allow tiles to be created with those features that remain
• --extend-zooms-if-still-dropping: If even the tiles at high zoom levels are too big, keep adding
zoom levels until one is reached that can represent all the features
Continuous polygon features (states and provinces), visible at all zoom levels
curl -L -O https://www.naturalearthdata.com/http//www.naturalearthdata.com/download/10m/cultural/ne_10m_admin_1_states_provinces.zip
unzip -o ne_10m_admin_1_states_provinces.zip
ogr2ogr -f GeoJSON ne_10m_admin_1_states_provinces.geojson ne_10m_admin_1_states_provinces.shp
tippecanoe -zg -o ne_10m_admin_1_states_provinces.mbtiles --coalesce-densest-as-needed --extend-zooms-if-still-dropping ne_10m_admin_1_states_provinces.geojson
• -zg: Automatically choose a maxzoom that should be sufficient to clearly distinguish the
features and the detail within each feature
• --coalesce-densest-as-needed: If the tiles are too big at low or medium zoom levels, merge as
many features together as are necessary to allow tiles to be created with those features that
are still distinguished
• --extend-zooms-if-still-dropping: If even the tiles at high zoom levels are too big, keep adding
zoom levels until one is reached that can represent all the features
Large point dataset (GPS bus locations), for visualization at all zoom levels
curl -L -O ftp://avl-data.sfmta.com/avl_data/avl_raw/sfmtaAVLRawData01012013.csv
sed 's/PREDICTABLE.*/PREDICTABLE/' sfmtaAVLRawData01012013.csv > sfmta.csv
tippecanoe -zg -o sfmta.mbtiles --drop-densest-as-needed --extend-zooms-if-still-dropping sfmta.csv
(The sed line is to clean the corrupt CSV header, which contains the wrong number of fields.)
• -zg: Automatically choose a maxzoom that should be sufficient to clearly distinguish the
features and the detail within each feature
• --drop-densest-as-needed: If the tiles are too big at low or medium zoom levels, drop the
least-visible features to allow tiles to be created with those features that remain
• --extend-zooms-if-still-dropping: If even the tiles at high zoom levels are too big, keep adding
zoom levels until one is reached that can represent all the features
Clustered points (world cities), summing the clustered population, visible at all zoom levels
curl -L -O https://www.naturalearthdata.com/http//www.naturalearthdata.com/download/10m/cultural/ne_10m_populated_places.zip
unzip -o ne_10m_populated_places.zip
ogr2ogr -f GeoJSON ne_10m_populated_places.geojson ne_10m_populated_places.shp
tippecanoe -zg -o ne_10m_populated_places.mbtiles -r1 --cluster-distance=10 --accumulate-attribute=POP_MAX:sum ne_10m_populated_places.geojson
• -zg: Automatically choose a maxzoom that should be sufficient to clearly distinguish the
features and the detail within each feature
• -r1: Do not automatically drop a fraction of points at low zoom levels, since clustering will be
used instead
• --cluster-distance=10: Cluster together features that are closer than about 10 pixels from each
other
• --accumulate-attribute=POP_MAX:sum: Sum the POP_MAX (population) attribute in features that are
clustered together. Other attributes will be arbitrarily taken from the first feature in the
cluster.
Show countries at low zoom levels but states at higher zoom levels
curl -L -O https://www.naturalearthdata.com/http//www.naturalearthdata.com/download/10m/cultural/ne_10m_admin_0_countries.zip
unzip ne_10m_admin_0_countries.zip
ogr2ogr -f GeoJSON ne_10m_admin_0_countries.geojson ne_10m_admin_0_countries.shp
curl -L -O https://www.naturalearthdata.com/http//www.naturalearthdata.com/download/10m/cultural/ne_10m_admin_1_states_provinces.zip
unzip -o ne_10m_admin_1_states_provinces.zip
ogr2ogr -f GeoJSON ne_10m_admin_1_states_provinces.geojson ne_10m_admin_1_states_provinces.shp
tippecanoe -z3 -o countries-z3.mbtiles --coalesce-densest-as-needed ne_10m_admin_0_countries.geojson
tippecanoe -zg -Z4 -o states-Z4.mbtiles --coalesce-densest-as-needed --extend-zooms-if-still-dropping ne_10m_admin_1_states_provinces.geojson
tile-join -o states-countries.mbtiles countries-z3.mbtiles states-Z4.mbtiles
Countries:
• -z3: Only generate zoom levels 0 through 3
• --coalesce-densest-as-needed: If the tiles are too big at low or medium zoom levels, merge as
many features together as are necessary to allow tiles to be created with those features that
are still distinguished
States and Provinces:
• -Z4: Only generate zoom levels 4 and beyond
• -zg: Automatically choose a maxzoom that should be sufficient to clearly distinguish the
features and the detail within each feature
• --coalesce-densest-as-needed: If the tiles are too big at low or medium zoom levels, merge as
many features together as are necessary to allow tiles to be created with those features that
are still distinguished
• --extend-zooms-if-still-dropping: If even the tiles at high zoom levels are too big, keep adding
zoom levels until one is reached that can represent all the features
Represent multiple sources (Illinois and Indiana counties) as separate layers
curl -L -O https://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/COUNTY/2010/tl_2010_17_county10.zip
unzip tl_2010_17_county10.zip
ogr2ogr -f GeoJSON tl_2010_17_county10.geojson tl_2010_17_county10.shp
curl -L -O https://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/COUNTY/2010/tl_2010_18_county10.zip
unzip tl_2010_18_county10.zip
ogr2ogr -f GeoJSON tl_2010_18_county10.geojson tl_2010_18_county10.shp
tippecanoe -zg -o counties-separate.mbtiles --coalesce-densest-as-needed --extend-zooms-if-still-dropping tl_2010_17_county10.geojson tl_2010_18_county10.geojson
• -zg: Automatically choose a maxzoom that should be sufficient to clearly distinguish the
features and the detail within each feature
• --coalesce-densest-as-needed: If the tiles are too big at low or medium zoom levels, merge as
many features together as are necessary to allow tiles to be created with those features that
are still distinguished
• --extend-zooms-if-still-dropping: If even the tiles at high zoom levels are too big, keep adding
zoom levels until one is reached that can represent all the features
Merge multiple sources (Illinois and Indiana counties) into the same layer
curl -L -O https://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/COUNTY/2010/tl_2010_17_county10.zip
unzip tl_2010_17_county10.zip
ogr2ogr -f GeoJSON tl_2010_17_county10.geojson tl_2010_17_county10.shp
curl -L -O https://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/COUNTY/2010/tl_2010_18_county10.zip
unzip tl_2010_18_county10.zip
ogr2ogr -f GeoJSON tl_2010_18_county10.geojson tl_2010_18_county10.shp
tippecanoe -zg -o counties-merged.mbtiles -l counties --coalesce-densest-as-needed --extend-zooms-if-still-dropping tl_2010_17_county10.geojson tl_2010_18_county10.geojson
As above, but
• -l counties: Specify the layer name instead of letting it be derived from the source file names
Selectively remove and replace features (Census tracts) to update a tileset
# Retrieve and tile California 2000 Census tracts
curl -L -O https://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/TRACT/2000/tl_2010_06_tract00.zip
unzip tl_2010_06_tract00.zip
ogr2ogr -f GeoJSON tl_2010_06_tract00.shp.json tl_2010_06_tract00.shp
tippecanoe -z11 -o tracts.mbtiles -l tracts tl_2010_06_tract00.shp.json
# Create a copy of the tileset, minus Alameda County (FIPS code 001)
tile-join -j '{"*":["none",["==","COUNTYFP00","001"]]}' -f -o tracts-filtered.mbtiles tracts.mbtiles
# Retrieve and tile Alameda County Census tracts for 2010
curl -L -O https://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/TRACT/2010/tl_2010_06001_tract10.zip
unzip tl_2010_06001_tract10.zip
ogr2ogr -f GeoJSON tl_2010_06001_tract10.shp.json tl_2010_06001_tract10.shp
tippecanoe -z11 -o tracts-added.mbtiles -l tracts tl_2010_06001_tract10.shp.json
# Merge the filtered tileset and the tileset of new tracts into a final tileset
tile-join -o tracts-final.mbtiles tracts-filtered.mbtiles tracts-added.mbtiles
The -z11 option explicitly specifies the maxzoom, to make sure both the old and new tilesets have the
same zoom range.
The -j option to tile-join specifies a filter, so that only the desired features will be copied to the
new tileset. This filter excludes (using none) any features whose FIPS code (COUNTYFP00) is the code for
Alameda County (001).
Options
There are a lot of options. A lot of the time you won't want to use any of them other than -o
output.mbtiles to name the output file, and probably -f to delete the file that already exists with that
name.
If you aren't sure what the right maxzoom is for your data, -zg will guess one for you based on the
density of features.
Tippecanoe will normally drop a fraction of point features at zooms below the maxzoom, to keep the
low-zoom tiles from getting too big. If you have a smaller data set where all the points would fit
without dropping any of them, use -r1 to keep them all. If you do want point dropping, but you still
want the tiles to be denser than -zg thinks they should be, use -B to set a basezoom lower than the
maxzoom.
If some of your tiles are coming out too big in spite of the settings above, you will often want to use
--drop-densest-as-needed to drop whatever fraction of the features is necessary at each zoom level to
make that zoom level's tiles work.
If your features have a lot of attributes, use -y to keep only the ones you really need.
If your input is formatted as newline-delimited GeoJSON, use -P to make input parsing a lot faster.
Output tileset
• -o file.mbtiles, file.pmtiles or --output=file.mbtiles: Name the output file.
• -e directory or --output-to-directory=directory: Write tiles to the specified directory instead
of to an mbtiles file.
• -f or --force: Delete the mbtiles file if it already exists instead of giving an error
• -F or --allow-existing: Proceed (without deleting existing data) if the metadata or tiles table
already exists or if metadata fields can't be set. You probably don't want to use this.
Tileset description and attribution
• -n name or --name=name: Human-readable name for the tileset (default file.json)
• -A text or --attribution=text: Attribution (HTML) to be shown with maps that use data from this
tileset.
• -N description or --description=description: Description for the tileset (default file.mbtiles)
Input files and layer names
• name.json or name.geojson: Read the named GeoJSON input file into a layer called name.
• name.json.gz or name.geojson.gz: Read the named gzipped GeoJSON input file into a layer called
name.
• name.fgb: Read the named FlatGeobuf input file into a layer called name.
• name.csv: Read the named CSV input file into a layer called name.
• -l name or --layer=name: Use the specified layer name instead of deriving a name from the input
filename or output tileset. If there are multiple input files specified, the files are all
merged into the single named layer, even if they try to specify individual names with -L.
• -L name:file.json or --named-layer=name:file.json: Specify layer names for individual files. If
your shell supports it, you can use a subshell redirect like -L name:<(cat dir/*.json) to
specify a layer name for the output of streamed input.
• -L{layer-json} or --named-layer={layer-json}: Specify an input file and layer options by a JSON
object. The JSON object must contain a "file" key to specify the filename to read from. (If the
"file" key is an empty string, it means to read from the standard input stream.) It may also
contain a "layer" field to specify the name of the layer, and/or a "description" field to
specify the layer's description in the tileset metadata, and/or a "format" field to specify csv
or fgb file format if it is not obvious from the name. Example:
tippecanoe -z5 -o world.mbtiles -L'{"file":"ne_10m_admin_0_countries.json", "layer":"countries", "description":"Natural Earth countries"}'
CSV input files currently support only Point geometries, from columns named latitude, longitude, lat,
lon, long, lng, x, or y.
Parallel processing of input
• -P or --read-parallel: Use multiple threads to read different parts of each GeoJSON input file
at once. This will only work if the input is line-delimited JSON with each Feature on its own
line, because it knows nothing of the top-level structure around the Features. Spurious "EOF"
error messages may result otherwise. Performance will be better if the input is a named file
that can be mapped into memory rather than a stream that can only be read sequentially.
If the input file begins with the RFC 8142 ⟨https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8142⟩ record separator,
parallel processing of input will be invoked automatically, splitting at record separators rather than at
all newlines.
Parallel processing will also be automatic if the input file is in FlatGeobuf format.
Projection of input
• -s projection or --projection=projection: Specify the projection of the input data. Currently
supported are EPSG:4326 (WGS84, the default) and EPSG:3857 (Web Mercator). In general you should
use WGS84 for your input files if at all possible.
Zoom levels
• -z zoom or --maximum-zoom=zoom: Maxzoom: the highest zoom level for which tiles are generated
(default 14)
• -zg or --maximum-zoom=g: Guess what is probably a reasonable maxzoom based on the spacing of
features.
• --smallest-maximum-zoom-guess=zoom: Guess what is probably a reasonable maxzoom based on the
spacing of features, but using the specified zoom if a lower maxzoom is guessed. If -Bg is also
set, the base zoom will be set to the guessed maxzoom, with all the points carried forward into
additional zooms through the one specified.
• -Z zoom or --minimum-zoom=zoom: Minzoom: the lowest zoom level for which tiles are generated
(default 0)
• -ae or --extend-zooms-if-still-dropping: Increase the maxzoom if features are still being
dropped at that zoom level. The detail and simplification options that ordinarily apply only to
the maximum zoom level will apply both to the originally specified maximum zoom and to any
levels added beyond that.
• --extend-zooms-if-still-dropping-maximum=count: Increase the maxzoom if features are still being
dropped at that zoom level by up to count zoom levels.
• -R zoom/x/y or --one-tile=zoom/x/y: Set the minzoom and maxzoom to zoom and produce only the
single specified tile at that zoom level.
If you know the precision to which you want your data to be represented, or the map scale of a
corresponding printed map, this table shows the approximate precision and scale corresponding to various
-z options if you use the default -d detail of 12:
┌────────────┬────────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐
│ zoom level │ precision (ft) │ precision (m) │ map scale │
├────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ -z0 │ 32000 ft │ 10000 m │ 1:320,000,000 │
├────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ -z1 │ 16000 ft │ 5000 m │ 1:160,000,000 │
├────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ -z2 │ 8000 ft │ 2500 m │ 1:80,000,000 │
├────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ -z3 │ 4000 ft │ 1250 m │ 1:40,000,000 │
├────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ -z4 │ 2000 ft │ 600 m │ 1:20,000,000 │
├────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ -z5 │ 1000 ft │ 300 m │ 1:10,000,000 │
├────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ -z6 │ 500 ft │ 150 m │ 1:5,000,000 │
├────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ -z7 │ 250 ft │ 80 m │ 1:2,500,000 │
├────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ -z8 │ 125 ft │ 40 m │ 1:1,250,000 │
├────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ -z9 │ 64 ft │ 20 m │ 1:640,000 │
├────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ -z10 │ 32 ft │ 10 m │ 1:320,000 │
├────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ -z11 │ 16 ft │ 5 m │ 1:160,000 │
├────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ -z12 │ 8 ft │ 2 m │ 1:80,000 │
├────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ -z13 │ 4 ft │ 1 m │ 1:40,000 │
├────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ -z14 │ 2 ft │ 0.5 m │ 1:20,000 │
├────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ -z15 │ 1 ft │ 0.25 m │ 1:10,000 │
├────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ -z16 │ 6 in │ 15 cm │ 1:5000 │
├────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ -z17 │ 3 in │ 8 cm │ 1:2500 │
├────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ -z18 │ 1.5 in │ 4 cm │ 1:1250 │
├────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ -z19 │ 0.8 in │ 2 cm │ 1:600 │
├────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ -z20 │ 0.4 in │ 1 cm │ 1:300 │
├────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ -z21 │ 0.2 in │ 0.5 cm │ 1:150 │
├────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ -z22 │ 0.1 in │ 0.25 cm │ 1:75 │
└────────────┴────────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘
Tile resolution
• -d detail or --full-detail=detail: Detail at max zoom level (default 12, for tile resolution of
2
• -D detail or --low-detail=detail: Detail at lower zoom levels (default 12, for tile resolution
of 2
• -m detail or --minimum-detail=detail: Minimum detail that it will try if tiles are too big at
regular detail (default 7)
• --extra-detail=detail: Generate tiles with even more detail than the "full" detail at the max
zoom level, to maximize location precision. These tiles may not work with some rendering
software that internally limits detail to 12 or 13. The extra detail does not affect the choice
of maxzoom guessing, the amount of simplification, or the "tiny polygon" threshold as
--full-detail does. The tiles should look the same as they did without it, except that they will
be more precise when overzoomed.
All internal math is done in terms of a 32-bit tile coordinate system, so 1/(2 of the size of Earth, or
about 1cm, is the smallest distinguishable distance. If maxzoom + detail > 32, no additional resolution
is obtained than by using a smaller maxzoom or detail, and the detail of tiles will be reduced to the
maximum that can be used with the specified maxzoom.
Filtering feature attributes
• -x name or --exclude=name: Exclude the named attributes from all features. You can specify
multiple -x options to exclude several attributes. (Don't comma-separate names within a single
-x.)
• -y name or --include=name: Include the named attributes in all features, excluding all those not
explicitly named. You can specify multiple -y options to explicitly include several attributes.
(Don't comma-separate names within a single -y.)
• -X or --exclude-all: Exclude all attributes and encode only geometries
Modifying feature attributes
• -Tattribute:type or --attribute-type=attribute:type: Coerce the named feature attribute to be of
the specified type. The type may be string, float, int, or bool. If the type is bool, then
original attributes of 0 (or, if numeric, 0.0, etc.), false, null, or the empty string become
false, and otherwise become true. If the type is float or int and the original attribute was
non-numeric, it becomes 0. If the type is int and the original attribute was floating-point, it
is rounded to the nearest integer.
• -Yattribute:description or --attribute-description=attribute:description: Set the description
for the specified attribute in the tileset metadata to description instead of the usual String,
Number, or Boolean.
• -Eattribute:operation or --accumulate-attribute=attribute:operation: Preserve the named
attribute from features that are dropped, coalesced-as-needed, or clustered. The operation may
be sum, product, mean, max, min, concat, or comma to specify how the named attribute is
accumulated onto the attribute of the same name in a feature that does survive. The attributes
and operations may also be specified as JSON keys and values: --accumulate-attribute='{"attr":
"operation", "attr2", "operation2"}'.
• --set-attribute attribute:value: Set the value of the specified attribute in each feature to the
specified value. This is mostly useful to give an attribute in each feature an initial value for
--accumulate-attribute. The attributes and values may also be specified as JSON keys and
values: --set-attribute='{"attr": value, "attr2", value}'.
• -pe or --empty-csv-columns-are-null: Treat empty CSV columns as nulls rather than as empty
strings.
• -aI or --convert-stringified-ids-to-numbers: If a feature ID is the string representation of a
number, convert it to a plain number to use as the feature ID.
• --use-attribute-for-id=name: Use the attribute with the specified name as if it were specified
as the feature ID. (If this attribute is a stringified number, you must also use -aI to convert
it to a number.)
• -pN or --single-precision: Write double-precision numeric attribute values to tiles as
single-precision to reduce tile size.
Filtering features by attributes
• -j filter or --feature-filter=filter: Check features against a per-layer filter (as defined in
the Mapbox GL Style Specification ⟨https://docs.mapbox.com/mapbox-gl-js/style-spec/#other-
filter⟩ or in a Felt filter specification still to be finalized) and only include those that
match. Any features in layers that have no filter specified will be passed through. Filters for
the layer "*" apply to all layers. The special variable $zoom refers to the current zoom level.
• -J filter-file or --feature-filter-file=filter-file: Like -j, but read the filter from a file.
Example: to find the Natural Earth countries with low scalerank but high LABELRANK:
tippecanoe -z5 -o filtered.mbtiles -j '{ "ne_10m_admin_0_countries": [ "all", [ "<", "scalerank", 3 ], [ ">", "LABELRANK", 5 ] ] }' ne_10m_admin_0_countries.geojson
Example: to retain only major TIGER roads at low zoom levels:
tippecanoe -o roads.mbtiles -j '{ "*": [ "any", [ ">=", "$zoom", 11 ], [ "in", "MTFCC", "S1100", "S1200" ] ] }' tl_2015_06001_roads.json
Tippecanoe also accepts expressions of the form [ "attribute-filter", name, expression ], to filter
individual feature attributes instead of entire features. For example, you can exclude the road names at
low zoom levels by doing
tippecanoe -o roads.mbtiles -j '{ "*": [ "attribute-filter", "FULLNAME", [ ">=", "$zoom", 9 ] ] }' tl_2015_06001_roads.json
An attribute-filter expression itself is always considered to evaluate to true (in other words, to retain
the feature instead of dropping it). If you want to use multiple attribute-filter expressions, or to use
other expressions to remove features from the same layer, enclose them in an all expression so they will
all be evaluated.
Dropping a fixed fraction of features by zoom level
• -r rate or --drop-rate=rate: Rate at which dots are dropped at zoom levels below basezoom
(default 2.5). If you use -rg, it will guess a drop rate that will keep at most 50,000 features
in the densest tile. You can also specify a marker-width with -rgwidth to allow fewer features
in the densest tile to compensate for the larger marker, or -rfnumber to allow at most number
features in the densest tile. If you use -rp with -zg or --smallest-maximum-zoom-guess it will
choose a drop rate from the same distance-between-features metrics as are used to choose the
maxzoom.
• -B zoom or --base-zoom=zoom: Base zoom, the level at and above which all points are included in
the tiles (default maxzoom). If you use -Bg, it will guess a zoom level that will keep at most
50,000 features in the densest tile. You can also specify a marker-width with -Bgwidth to allow
fewer features in the densest tile to compensate for the larger marker, or -Bfnumber to allow at
most number features in the densest tile.
• --retain-points-multiplier=multiple: Retain the specified multiple of points instead of just the
number of points that would ordinarily be retained by the drop rate. These can be thinned out
later with the -m option to tippecanoe-overzoom. The start of each cluster is marked in the
feature sequence by the tippecanoe:retain_points_multiplier_first attribute. The
--tile-size-limit will also be extended at low zoom levels to allow for the multiplied features.
• --drop-denser=percentage: When dropping dots at zoom levels below the base zoom, give the
specified percentage preference to retaining points in sparse areas and dropping points in dense
areas.
• --limit-base-zoom-to-maximum-zoom or -Pb: Limit the guessed base zoom not to exceed the maxzoom,
even if this would put more than the requested number of features in a base zoom tile.
• -al or --drop-lines: Let "dot" dropping at lower zooms apply to lines too
• -ap or --drop-polygons: Let "dot" dropping at lower zooms apply to polygons too
• -K distance or --cluster-distance=distance: Cluster points (as with --cluster-densest-as-needed,
but without the experimental discovery process) that are approximately within distance of each
other. The units are tile coordinates within a nominally 256-pixel tile, so the maximum value of
255 allows only one feature per tile. Values around 10 are probably appropriate for typical
marker sizes. See --cluster-densest-as-needed below for behavior.
• -k zoom or --cluster-maxzoom=zoom: Max zoom on which to cluster points if clustering is enabled.
• -kg or --cluster-maxzoom=g: Set --cluster-maxzoom= to maxzoom - 1 so that all features are
visible at the maximum zoom level.
• --preserve-point-density-threshold=level: At the low zoom levels, do not reduce point density
below the specified level, even if the specfied drop rate would normally call for it, so that
low-density areas of the map do not appear blank. The unit is the distance between preserved
points, as a fraction of the size of a tile. Values of 32 or 64 are probably appropriate for
typical marker sizes.
Dropping a fraction of features to keep under tile size limits
• -as or --drop-densest-as-needed: If a tile is too large, try to reduce it to under 500K by
increasing the minimum spacing between features. The discovered spacing applies to the entire
zoom level.
• -ad or --drop-fraction-as-needed: Dynamically drop some fraction of features from each zoom
level to keep large tiles under the 500K size limit. (This is like -pd but applies to the entire
zoom level, not to each tile.)
• -an or --drop-smallest-as-needed: Dynamically drop the smallest features (physically smallest:
the shortest lines or the smallest polygons) from each zoom level to keep large tiles under the
500K size limit.
• -aN or --coalesce-smallest-as-needed: Dynamically combine the smallest features (physically
smallest: the shortest lines or the smallest polygons or the densest points) from each zoom
level into other nearby features to keep large tiles under the 500K size limit. This option will
probably not help very much with LineStrings. It is mostly intended for polygons, to maintain
the full original area covered by polygons while still reducing the feature count somehow. The
attributes of the small polygons are not preserved into the combined features (except through
--accumulate-attribute), only their geometry. Furthermore, the polygons to which nested polygons
are coalesced may not necessarily be the immediately enclosing features.
• -aD or --coalesce-densest-as-needed: Dynamically combine the densest features from each zoom
level into other nearby features to keep large tiles under the 500K size limit. (Again, mostly
useful for polygons.)
• -aS or --coalesce-fraction-as-needed: Dynamically combine a fraction of features from each zoom
level into other nearby features to keep large tiles under the 500K size limit. (Again, mostly
useful for polygons.)
• -pd or --force-feature-limit: Dynamically drop some fraction of features from large tiles to
keep them under the 500K size limit. It will probably look ugly at the tile boundaries. (This is
like -ad but applies to each tile individually, not to the entire zoom level.) You probably
don't want to use this.
• -aC or --cluster-densest-as-needed: If a tile is too large, try to reduce its size by increasing
the minimum spacing between features, and leaving one placeholder feature from each group. The
remaining feature will be given a "clustered": true attribute to indicate that it represents a
cluster, a "point_count" attribute to indicate the number of features that were clustered into
it, and a "sqrt_point_count" attribute to indicate the relative width of a feature to represent
the cluster. If the features being clustered are points, the representative feature will be
located at the average of the original points' locations; otherwise, one of the original
features will be left as the representative.
Dropping tightly overlapping features
• -g gamma or --gamma=_gamma_: Rate at which especially dense dots are dropped (default 0, for no
effect). A gamma of 2 reduces the number of dots less than a pixel apart to the square root of
their original number.
• -aG or --increase-gamma-as-needed: If a tile is too large, try to reduce it to under 500K by
increasing the -g gamma. The discovered gamma applies to the entire zoom level. You probably
want to use --drop-densest-as-needed instead.
Line and polygon simplification
• -S scale or --simplification=scale: Multiply the tolerance for line and polygon simplification
by scale. The standard tolerance tries to keep the line or polygon within one tile unit of its
proper location. You can probably go up to about 10 without too much visible difference.
• -ps or --no-line-simplification: Don't simplify lines and polygons
• -pS or --simplify-only-low-zooms: Don't simplify lines and polygons at maxzoom (but do simplify
at lower zooms)
• --simplification-at-maximum-zoom=scale: Use the specified scale at maxzoom instead of the
standard simplification scale (which still applies at lower zooms)
• -pn or --no-simplification-of-shared-nodes: Don't simplify away nodes at which LineStrings or
Polygon rings converge, diverge, or cross. (This will not be effective if you also use
--coalesce.) In between intersection nodes, LineString segments or polygon edges will be
simplified identically in each feature if possible. Use this instead of --detect-shared-borders.
• -pt or --no-tiny-polygon-reduction: Don't combine the area of very small polygons into small
squares that represent their combined area.
• -pT or --no-tiny-polygon-reduction-at-maximum-zoom: Combine the area of very small polygons into
small squares that represent their combined area only at zoom levels below the maximum.
• --tiny-polygon-size=size: Use the specified size for tiny polygons instead of the default 2.
Anything above 6 or so will lead to visible artifacts with the default tile detail.
• -av or --visvalingam: Use Visvalingam's simplification algorithm rather than Douglas-Peucker's.
Attempts to improve shared polygon boundaries
• -ab or --detect-shared-borders: DEPRECATED. In the manner of TopoJSON
⟨https://github.com/mbostock/topojson/wiki/Introduction⟩, detect borders that are shared between
multiple polygons and simplify them identically in each polygon. This takes more time and memory
than considering each polygon individually. Use no-simplification-of-shared-nodes instead, which
is faster and more correct.
• -aL or --grid-low-zooms: At all zoom levels below maxzoom, snap all lines and polygons to a
stairstep grid instead of allowing diagonals. You will also want to specify a tile resolution,
probably -D8. This option provides a way to display continuous parcel, gridded, or binned data
at low zooms without overwhelming the tiles with tiny polygons, since features will either get
stretched out to the grid unit or lost entirely, depending on how they happened to be aligned in
the original data. You probably don't want to use this.
Controlling clipping to tile boundaries
• -b pixels or --buffer=pixels: Buffer size where features are duplicated from adjacent tiles.
Units are "screen pixels"—1/256th of the tile width or height. (default 5)
• -pc or --no-clipping: Don't clip features to the size of the tile. If a feature overlaps the
tile's bounds or buffer at all, it is included completely. Be careful: this can produce very
large tilesets, especially with large polygons.
• -pD or --no-duplication: As with --no-clipping, each feature is included intact instead of cut
to tile boundaries. In addition, it is included only in a single tile per zoom level rather than
potentially in multiple copies. Clients of the tileset must check adjacent tiles (possibly some
distance away) to ensure they have all features.
Reordering features within each tile
• -pi or --preserve-input-order: Preserve the original input order of features as the drawing
order instead of ordering geographically. (This is implemented as a restoration of the original
order at the end, so that dot-dropping is still geographic, which means it also undoes -ao).
• -ac or --coalesce: Coalesce consecutive features that have the same attributes. This can be
useful if you have lots of small polygons with identical attributes and you would like to merge
them together.
• -ao or --reorder: Reorder features to put ones with the same attributes in sequence (instead of
ones that are approximately spatially adjacent), to try to get them to coalesce. You probably
want to use this if you use --coalesce.
• -ar or --reverse: Try reversing the directions of lines to make them coalesce and compress
better. You probably don't want to use this.
• -ah or --hilbert: Put features in Hilbert Curve order instead of the usual Z-Order. This
improves the odds that spatially adjacent features will be sequentially adjacent, and should
improve density calculations and spatial coalescing. It should be the default eventually.
• --order-by=attribute: Order features by the specified attribute, in alphabetical or numerical
order. Multiple --order-by and --order-descending-by options may be specified, the first being
the primary sort key.
• --order-descending-by=attribute: Order features by the specified attribute, in reverse
alphabetical or numerical order. Multiple --order-by and --order-descending-by options may be
specified, the first being the primary sort key.
• --order-smallest-first: Order features so the smallest geometry comes first in each tile.
Multiple --order-by and --order-descending-by options may be specified, the first being the
primary sort key.
• --order-largest-first: Order features so the largest geometry comes first in each tile. Multiple
--order-by and --order-descending-by options may be specified, the first being the primary sort
key.
Adding calculated attributes
• -ag or --calculate-feature-density: Add a new attribute, tippecanoe_feature_density, to each
feature, to record how densely features are spaced in that area of the tile. You can use this
attribute in the style to produce a glowing effect where points are densely packed. It can range
from 0 in the sparsest areas to 255 in the densest.
• -ai or --generate-ids: Add an id (a feature ID, not an attribute named id) to each feature that
does not already have one. There is currently no guarantee that the id added will be stable
between runs or that it will not conflict with manually-assigned feature IDs. Future versions of
Tippecanoe may change the mechanism for allocating IDs.
Trying to correct bad source geometry
• -aw or --detect-longitude-wraparound: Detect when consecutive points within a feature jump to
the other side of the world, and try to fix the geometry.
• -pw or --use-source-polygon-winding: Instead of respecting GeoJSON polygon ring order, use the
original polygon winding in the source data to distinguish inner (clockwise) and outer
(counterclockwise) polygon rings.
• -pW or --reverse-source-polygon-winding: Instead of respecting GeoJSON polygon ring order, use
the opposite of the original polygon winding in the source data to distinguish inner
(counterclockwise) and outer (clockwise) polygon rings.
• --clip-bounding-box=minlon,minlat,maxlon,maxlat: Clip all features to the specified bounding
box.
• -aP or --convert-polygons-to-label-points: Replace polygon geometries with a label point or
points for the polygon in each tile it intersects.
Setting or disabling tile size limits
• -M bytes or --maximum-tile-bytes=bytes: Use the specified number of bytes as the maximum
compressed tile size instead of 500K.
• -O features or --maximum-tile-features=features: Use the specified number of features as the
maximum in a tile instead of 200,000.
• --limit-tile-feature-count=features: Abruptly limit each tile to the specified number of
features, after ordering them if specified.
• --limit-tile-feature-count-at-maximum-zoom=features: Abruptly limit each tile at the maximum
zoom level to the specified number of features, after ordering them if specified.
• -pf or --no-feature-limit: Don't limit tiles to 200,000 features
• -pk or --no-tile-size-limit: Don't limit tiles to 500K bytes
• -pC or --no-tile-compression: Don't compress the PBF vector tile data. If you are getting
"Unimplemented type 3" error messages from a renderer, it is probably because it expects
uncompressed tiles using this option rather than the normal gzip-compressed tiles.
• -pg or --no-tile-stats: Don't generate the tilestats row in the tileset metadata. Uploads
without tilestats ⟨https://github.com/mapbox/mapbox-geostats⟩ will take longer to process.
• --tile-stats-attributes-limit=count: Include tilestats information about at most count
attributes instead of the default 1000.
• --tile-stats-sample-values-limit=count: Calculate tilestats attribute statistics based on count
values instead of the default 1000.
• --tile-stats-values-limit=count: Report count unique attribute values in tilestats instead of
the default 100.
Temporary storage
• -t directory or --temporary-directory=directory: Put the temporary files in directory. If you
don't specify, it will use /tmp.
Progress indicator
• -q or --quiet: Work quietly instead of reporting progress or warning messages
• -Q or --no-progress-indicator: Don't report progress, but still give warnings
• -U seconds or --progress-interval=seconds: Don't report progress more often than the specified
number of seconds.
• -u or --json-progress: like -quiet but logs progress as a JSON object. Use in combination with
-U.
• -v or --version: Report Tippecanoe's version number
Filters
• -C command or --prefilter=command: Specify a shell filter command to be run at the start of
assembling each tile
• -c command or --postfilter=command: Specify a shell filter command to be run at the end of
assembling each tile
The pre- and post-filter commands allow you to do optional filtering or transformation on the features of
each tile as it is created. They are shell commands, run with the zoom level, X, and Y as the $1, $2, and
$3 arguments. Future versions of Tippecanoe may add additional arguments for more context.
The features are provided to the filter as a series of newline-delimited GeoJSON objects on the standard
input, and tippecanoe expects to read another set of GeoJSON features from the filter's standard output.
The prefilter receives the features at the highest available resolution, before line simplification,
polygon topology repair, gamma calculation, dynamic feature dropping, or other internal processing. The
postfilter receives the features at tile resolution, after simplification, cleaning, and dropping.
The layer name is provided as part of the tippecanoe element of the feature and must be passed through to
keep the feature in its correct layer. In the case of the prefilter, the tippecanoe element may also
contain index, sequence, extent, and dropped, elements, which must be passed through for internal
operations like --drop-densest-as-needed, --drop-smallest-as-needed, and --preserve-input-order to work.
Examples:
• Make a tileset of the Natural Earth countries to zoom level 5, and also copy the GeoJSON
features to files in a tiles/z/x/y.geojson directory hierarchy.
tippecanoe -o countries.mbtiles -z5 -C 'mkdir -p tiles/$1/$2; tee tiles/$1/$2/$3.geojson' ne_10m_admin_0_countries.json
• Make a tileset of the Natural Earth countries to zoom level 5, but including only those tiles
that intersect the bounding box of Germany ⟨https://www.flickr.com/places/info/23424829⟩. (The
limit-tiles-to-bbox script is in the Tippecanoe source directory ⟨filters/limit-tiles-to-bbox⟩.)
tippecanoe -o countries.mbtiles -z5 -C './filters/limit-tiles-to-bbox 5.8662 47.2702 15.0421 55.0581 $*' ne_10m_admin_0_countries.json
• Make a tileset of TIGER roads in Tippecanoe County, leaving out all but primary and secondary
roads (as classified by TIGER ⟨https://www.census.gov/geo/reference/mtfcc.html⟩) below zoom
level 11.
tippecanoe -o roads.mbtiles -c 'if [ $1 -lt 11 ]; then grep "\"MTFCC\": \"S1[12]00\""; else cat; fi' tl_2016_18157_roads.json
Environment
Tippecanoe ordinarily uses as many parallel threads as the operating system claims that CPUs are
available. You can override this number by setting the TIPPECANOE_MAX_THREADS environmental variable.
GeoJSON extension
Tippecanoe defines a GeoJSON extension that you can use to specify the minimum and/or maximum zoom level
at which an individual feature will be included in the vector tileset being produced. If you have a
feature like this:
{
"type" : "Feature",
"tippecanoe" : { "maxzoom" : 9, "minzoom" : 4 },
"properties" : { "FULLNAME" : "N Vasco Rd" },
"geometry" : {
"type" : "LineString",
"coordinates" : [ [ -121.733350, 37.767671 ], [ -121.733600, 37.767483 ], [ -121.733131, 37.766952 ] ]
}
}
with a tippecanoe object specifiying a maxzoom of 9 and a minzoom of 4, the feature will only appear in
the vector tiles for zoom levels 4 through 9. Note that the tippecanoe object belongs to the Feature, not
to its properties. If you specify a minzoom for a feature, it will be preserved down to that zoom level
even if dot-dropping with -r would otherwise have dropped it.
You can also specify a layer name in the tippecanoe object, which will take precedence over the filename
or name specified using --layer, like this:
{
"type" : "Feature",
"tippecanoe" : { "layer" : "streets" },
"properties" : { "FULLNAME" : "N Vasco Rd" },
"geometry" : {
"type" : "LineString",
"coordinates" : [ [ -121.733350, 37.767671 ], [ -121.733600, 37.767483 ], [ -121.733131, 37.766952 ] ]
}
}
If your source GeoJSON only has minzoom, maxzoom and/or layer within properties you can use ndjson-cli
⟨https://github.com/mbostock/ndjson-cli/blob/master/README.md⟩ to move them into the required tippecanoe
object by piping the GeoJSON like this:
ndjson-map 'd.tippecanoe = { minzoom: d.properties.minzoom, maxzoom: d.properties.maxzoom, layer: d.properties.layer }, delete d.properties.minzoom, delete d.properties.maxzoom, delete d.properties.layer, d'
Geometric simplifications
At every zoom level, line and polygon features are subjected to Douglas-Peucker simplification to the
resolution of the tile.
For point features, it drops 1/2.5 of the dots for each zoom level above the point base zoom (which is
normally the same as the -z max zoom, but can be a different zoom specified with -B if you have precise
but sparse data). I don't know why 2.5 is the appropriate number, but the densities of many different
data sets fall off at about this same rate. You can use -r to specify a different rate.
You can use the gamma option to thin out especially dense clusters of points. For any area where dots
are closer than one pixel together (at whatever zoom level), a gamma of 3, for example, will reduce these
clusters to the cube root of their original density.
For line features, it drops any features that are too small to draw at all. This still leaves the lower
zooms too dark (and too dense for the 500K tile limit, in some places), so I need to figure out an
equitable way to throw features away.
Unless you specify --no-tiny-polygon-reduction, any polygons that are smaller than a minimum area
(currently 4 square subpixels) will have their probability diffused, so that some of them will be drawn
as a square of this minimum size and others will not be drawn at all, preserving the total area that all
of them should have had together.
Features in the same tile that share the same type and attributes are coalesced together into a single
geometry if you use --coalesce. You are strongly encouraged to use -x to exclude any unnecessary
attributes to reduce wasted file size.
If a tile is larger than 500K, it will try encoding that tile at progressively lower resolutions before
failing if it still doesn't fit.
Development
Requires sqlite3 and zlib (should already be installed on MacOS). Rebuilding the manpage uses md2man (gem
install md2man).
Linux:
sudo apt-get install build-essential libsqlite3-dev zlib1g-dev
Then build:
make
and perhaps
make install
Tippecanoe now requires features from the 2011 C++ standard. If your compiler is older than that, you
will need to install a newer one. On MacOS, updating to the lastest XCode should get you a new enough
version of clang++. On Linux, you should be able to upgrade g++ with
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test
sudo apt-get update -y
sudo apt-get install -y g++-5
export CXX=g++-5
Docker Image
A tippecanoe Docker image can be built from source and executed as a task to automatically install
dependencies and allow tippecanoe to run on any system supported by Docker.
$ docker build -t tippecanoe:latest .
$ docker run -it --rm \
-v /tiledata:/data \
tippecanoe:latest \
tippecanoe --output=/data/output.mbtiles /data/example.geojson
The commands above will build a Docker image from the source and compile the latest version. The image
supports all tippecanoe flags and options.
Examples
Check out some examples of maps made with tippecanoe ⟨MADE_WITH.md⟩
Name
The name is a joking reference ⟨http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tippecanoe_and_Tyler_Too⟩ to a "tiler" for
making map tiles.
tile-join
Tile-join is a tool for copying and merging vector mbtiles files and for joining new attributes from a
CSV file to existing features in them.
It reads the tiles from an existing .mbtiles file, .pmtiles file, or a directory of tiles, matches them
against the records of the CSV (if one is specified), and writes out a new tileset.
If you specify multiple source mbtiles files or source directories of tiles, all the sources are read and
their combined contents are written to the new mbtiles output. If they define the same layers or the same
tiles, the layers or tiles are merged.
The options are:
Output tileset
• -o out.mbtiles, out.pmtiles or --output=out.mbtiles: Write the new tiles to the specified
.mbtiles file.
• -e directory or --output-to-directory=directory: Write the new tiles to the specified directory
instead of to an mbtiles file.
• -f or --force: Remove out.mbtiles if it already exists.
• -r or --read-from: list of input mbtiles to read from.
Overzooming
• --overzoom: If one of the source tilesets has a larger maxzoom than the others, scale up tiles
from the tilesets with the lower maxzooms so they will all have the same maxzoom in the output
tileset.
• --buffer=pixels or -b pixels: Set the size of the tile buffer in the overzoomed tiles.
Tileset description and attribution
• -A attribution or --attribution=attribution: Set the attribution string.
• -n name or --name=name: Set the tileset name.
• -N description or --description=description: Set the tileset description.
Layer filtering and naming
• -l layer or --layer=layer: Include the named layer in the output. You can specify multiple -l
options to keep multiple layers. If you don't specify, they will all be retained.
• -L layer or --exclude-layer=layer: Remove the named layer from the output. You can specify
multiple -L options to remove multiple layers.
• -Rold:new or --rename-layer=old:new: Rename the layer named old to be named new instead. You can
specify multiple -R options to rename multiple layers. Renaming happens before filtering.
Zoom levels
• -z zoom or --maximum-zoom=zoom: Don't copy tiles from higher zoom levels than the specified zoom
• -Z zoom or --minimum-zoom=zoom: Don't copy tiles from lower zoom levels than the specified zoom
Merging attributes from a CSV file
• -c match.csv or --csv=match.csv: Use match.csv as the source for new attributes to join to the
features. The first line of the file should be the key names; the other lines are values. The
first column is the one to match against the existing features; the other columns are the new
data to add.
Filtering features and feature attributes
• -x key or --exclude=key: Remove attributes named key from the output. You can use this to remove
the field you are matching against if you no longer need it after joining, or to remove any
other attributes you don't want. You can use multiple -x options to remove multiple attributes.
• -X or --exclude-all: Remove all attributes from the output.
• -y key or --include=key: Remove all attributes except for those named key from the output. You
can use multiple -y options to retain multiple attributes.
• -i or --if-matched: Only include features that matched the CSV.
• -j filter or --feature-filter=filter: Check features against a per-layer filter (as defined in
the Mapbox GL Style Specification ⟨https://docs.mapbox.com/mapbox-gl-js/style-spec/#other-
filter⟩) and only include those that match. Any features in layers that have no filter specified
will be passed through. Filters for the layer "*" apply to all layers.
• -J filter-file or --feature-filter-file=filter-file: Like -j, but read the filter from a file.
• -pe or --empty-csv-columns-are-null: Treat empty CSV columns as nulls rather than as empty
strings.
Setting or disabling tile size limits
• -pk or --no-tile-size-limit: Don't skip tiles larger than 500K.
• -pC or --no-tile-compression: Don't compress the PBF vector tile data.
• -pg or --no-tile-stats: Don't generate the tilestats row in the tileset metadata. Uploads
without tilestats ⟨https://github.com/mapbox/mapbox-geostats⟩ will take longer to process.
• --tile-stats-attributes-limit=count: Include tilestats information about at most count
attributes instead of the default 1000.
• --tile-stats-sample-values-limit=count: Calculate tilestats attribute statistics based on count
values instead of the default 1000.
• --tile-stats-values-limit=count: Report count unique attribute values in tilestats instead of
the default 100.
Because tile-join just copies the geometries to the new .mbtiles without processing them (except to
rescale the extents if necessary), it doesn't have any of tippecanoe's recourses if the new tiles are
bigger than the 500K tile limit. If a tile is too big and you haven't specified -pk, it is just left out
of the new tileset.
Example
Imagine you have a tileset of census blocks:
curl -L -O http://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/TABBLOCK/2010/tl_2010_06001_tabblock10.zip
unzip tl_2010_06001_tabblock10.zip
ogr2ogr -f GeoJSON tl_2010_06001_tabblock10.json tl_2010_06001_tabblock10.shp
./tippecanoe -o tl_2010_06001_tabblock10.mbtiles tl_2010_06001_tabblock10.json
and a CSV of their populations:
curl -L -O http://www2.census.gov/census_2010/01-Redistricting_File--PL_94-171/California/ca2010.pl.zip
unzip -p ca2010.pl.zip cageo2010.pl |
awk 'BEGIN {
print "GEOID10,population"
}
(substr($0, 9, 3) == "750") {
print "\"" substr($0, 28, 2) substr($0, 30, 3) substr($0, 55, 6) substr($0, 62, 4) "\"," (0 + substr($0, 328, 9))
}' > population.csv
which looks like this:
GEOID10,population
"060014277003018",0
"060014283014046",0
"060014284001020",0
...
"060014507501001",202
"060014507501002",119
"060014507501003",193
"060014507501004",85
...
Then you can join those populations to the geometries and discard the no-longer-needed ID field:
./tile-join -o population.mbtiles -x GEOID10 -c population.csv tl_2010_06001_tabblock10.mbtiles
tippecanoe-enumerate
The tippecanoe-enumerate utility lists the tiles that an mbtiles file defines. Each line of the output
lists the name of the mbtiles file and the zoom, x, and y coordinates of one of the tiles. It does
basically the same thing as
select zoom_level, tile_column, (1 << zoom_level) - 1 - tile_row from tiles;
on the file in sqlite3.
tippecanoe-decode
The tippecanoe-decode utility turns vector mbtiles back to GeoJSON. You can use it either on an entire
file:
tippecanoe-decode file.mbtiles
tippecanoe-decode file.pmtiles
or on an individual tile:
tippecanoe-decode file.mbtiles zoom x y
tippecanoe-decode file.vector.pbf zoom x y
Unless you use -c, the output is a set of nested FeatureCollections identifying each tile and layer
separately. Note that the same features generally appear at all zooms, so the output for the file will
have many copies of the same features at different resolutions.
Options
• -s projection or --projection=projection: Specify the projection of the output data. Currently
supported are EPSG:4326 (WGS84, the default) and EPSG:3857 (Web Mercator).
• -z maxzoom or --maximum-zoom=maxzoom: Specify the highest zoom level to decode from the tileset
• -Z minzoom or --minimum-zoom=minzoom: Specify the lowest zoom level to decode from the tileset
• -l layer or --layer=layer: Decode only layers with the specified names. (Multiple -l options can
be specified.)
• -c or --tag-layer-and-zoom: Include each feature's layer and zoom level as part of its
tippecanoe object rather than as a FeatureCollection wrapper
• -S or --stats: Just report statistics about each tile's size and the number of features in it,
as a JSON structure.
• -f or --force: Decode tiles even if polygon ring order or closure problems are detected
• -I or --integer: Report coordinates in integer tile coordinates
• -F or --fraction: Report coordinates as a fraction of the tile extent
tippecanoe-json-tool
Extracts GeoJSON features or standalone geometries as line-delimited JSON objects from a larger JSON
file, following the same extraction rules that Tippecanoe uses when parsing JSON.
tippecanoe-json-tool file.json [... file.json]
Optionally also wraps them in a FeatureCollection or GeometryCollection as appropriate.
Optionally extracts an attribute from the GeoJSON properties for sorting.
Optionally joins a sorted CSV of new attributes to a sorted GeoJSON file.
The reason for requiring sorting is so that it is possible to work on CSV and GeoJSON files that are
larger than can comfortably fit in memory by streaming through them in parallel, in the same way that the
Unix join command does. The Unix sort command can be used to sort large files to prepare them for
joining.
The sorting interface is weird, and future version of tippecanoe-json-tool will replace it with something
better.
Options
• -w or --wrap: Add the FeatureCollection or GeometryCollection wrapper.
• -e attribute or --extract=attribute: Extract the named attribute as a prefix to each feature.
The formatting makes excessive use of \u quoting so that it follows JSON string rules but will
still be sorted correctly by tools that just do ASCII comparisons.
• -c file.csv or --csv=file.csv: Join attributes from the named sorted CSV file, using its first
column as the join key. Geometries will be passed through even if they do not match the CSV; CSV
lines that do not match a geometry will be discarded.
• -pe or --empty-csv-columns-are-null: Treat empty CSV columns as nulls rather than as empty
strings.
Example
Join Census LEHD (Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics ⟨https://lehd.ces.census.gov/⟩) employment
data to a file of Census block geography for Tippecanoe County, Indiana.
Download Census block geometry, and convert to GeoJSON:
$ curl -L -O https://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/TABBLOCK/2010/tl_2010_18157_tabblock10.zip
$ unzip tl_2010_18157_tabblock10.zip
$ ogr2ogr -f GeoJSON tl_2010_18157_tabblock10.json tl_2010_18157_tabblock10.shp
Download Indiana employment data, and fix name of join key in header
$ curl -L -O https://lehd.ces.census.gov/data/lodes/LODES7/in/wac/in_wac_S000_JT00_2015.csv.gz
$ gzip -dc in_wac_S000_JT00_2015.csv.gz | sed '1s/w_geocode/GEOID10/' > in_wac_S000_JT00_2015.csv
Sort GeoJSON block geometry so it is ordered by block ID. If you don't do this, you will get a "GeoJSON
file is out of sort" error.
$ tippecanoe-json-tool -e GEOID10 tl_2010_18157_tabblock10.json | LC_ALL=C sort > tl_2010_18157_tabblock10.sort.json
Join block geometries to employment attributes:
$ tippecanoe-json-tool -c in_wac_S000_JT00_2015.csv tl_2010_18157_tabblock10.sort.json > blocks-wac.json
tippecanoe-overzoom
The tippecanoe-overzoom utility creates a vector tile from one of its parent tiles, clipping and scaling
the geometry from the parent tile and excluding features that are clipped away. The idea is that if you
create very high resolution tiles (using --extra-detail) at a moderate zoom level, you can use
tippecanoe-overzoom to turn those into moderate detail tiles at high zoom levels, for the benefit of
renderers that cannot internally overzoom high-resolution tiles without losing some of the precision.
Running:
tippecanoe-overzoom -o out.mvt.gz inz/inx/iny outz/outx/outy in.mvt.gz
reads tile inz/inx/iny of in.mvt.gz and produces tile outz/outx/outy of out.mvt.gz.
Options
• -b buffer: Set the tile buffer in the output tile (default 5)
• -d detail: Set the detail of the output tile (default 12)
• -y attribute: Retain the specified attribute in the output features. All attributes that are not
named in a -y option will be removed.
• -j filter: Filter features using the same expression syntax as in tippecanoe.
• -m: If a tile was created with the --retain-points-multiplier option, thin the tile back down to
its normal feature count during overzooming. The first feature from each cluster will be
retained, unless -j is used to specify a filter, in which case the first matching filter from
each cluster will be retained instead.
• --preserve-input-order: Restore a set of filtered features to its original input order
• --accumulate-attribute: Behaves as in tippecanoe to sum attributes from the features of a
multiplier cluster that are not included in the final output. The attributes from features that
are filtered away with -j are not accumulated onto the output feature.
tippecanoe()