Add vectorgrid support

[emilhe]

Add wrapper(s) of leaflet vectorgrid,

https://github.com/mhasbie/react-leaflet-vectorgrid

[prl900]

Hi @emilhe, I wonder how much effort or difficult would be to add this feature to the library. Being able to display vector tiles would be quite useful for working with dense polygon data in Dash applications. Thanks!

[emilhe]

I don't think it will take a crazy amount of time. At least not to implement the basic functionality (:

[henrygsys]

Hi, is this something that is the pipeline to do soon? I would like to be add Mapbox Vector Tile sources to Dash Leaflet but it seems they are not supported. Are there any workarounds for this?

[emilhe]

@henrygsys It's one of the top 3 (larger) features to be requested. I haven't got an exat timeline, but it would help if you could post details here with respect to your usecase (e.g. the URLs that should be loaded), so that I can use it for testing.

[henrygsys]

Sure.

Essentially, I am using Mapbox as a tileserver to store some layers of vector data, mostly global sets of polygons to show protected areas and that sort of thing. The urls follow the below convention and they are added to mapbox using the vector tiles url.

f"https://api.mapbox.com/v4/{tile_set_name}/{{z}}/{{x}}/{{y}}.mvt"
https://docs.mapbox.com/api/maps/vector-tiles/

It is possible to add these using the general Dash map figures by passing it as a mapbox layer source using the below. But as i understand it, these do not render when using dl.TileLayer.

fig.update_layout(
mapbox={
'accesstoken': MAPBOX_TOKEN,
'style': style,
'zoom': 2,
'layers': map_layer
}

[emilhe]

I did a bit of research on possible options yesterday. It seems that VectorGrid doesn't support mapbox tiles (and it also seems abandoned). I then stumled upon maplibre-gl-leaflet, which supports mapbox files, but doesn't have the same amount of configuration options as VectorGrid. If anyone has experience with mapbox/vector tiles using "raw" leaflet, I would be gratefull for some input on which plugin to choose here in 20203 :)

[ivvnnnn]

@emilhe It seems Vector Grid can support Map Box Vector tiles, if call VectorGrid.Protobuf (link: https://leaflet.github.io/Leaflet.VectorGrid/vectorgrid-api-docs.html). In Leaflet it works. React-leaflet support protobuf too (link: https://github.com/mhasbie/react-leaflet-vectorgrid). May be, it help

[emacollins]

Hi, just wanted to follow up on this thread and the proposed vectorgrid support. Wondering if there are any updates (or potential workarounds?). I am trying to display a very large GeoJSON and it is really slowing down/crashing the app.

Seems the alternative in this situation would be to use a vector tile server (like Tegola).

[emilhe]

While the discussion was active (~ a year ago), i played a bit around with vectorgrid and a few of the alternatives (they differ in their interfaces, which formats are supported, where/how/if slicing is supported, etc.). However, it was never settled which component(s) to add to dash-leaflet.

To my knowledge, there hasn't been any work since then. I haven't encountered any use cases in a work related context, and I thus haven't been able to prioritize development time on the topic.

[Eric-UW-CRL]

First off, really love this project and what it enables as far as building mapping applications with Dash!

It seems like adding the VectorTileLayer would be a huge unlock to the functionality and bring together the ability to display raster and vector data.

I see there is a branch started for this. Where did you leave off or run into issues with this? I would love to help contribute but am still familiarizing myself with the codebase and don't have experience with JS.

[emacollins]

Hey @emilhe , just wanted to follow up. I am curious what issues (if any) you ran into on the vector grid branch? Would love to pick up where you left off and try to get this feature added. I am a beginner in TS and JS.