MBTiles

MBTiles is a file format for storing map tiles in a single file. It is, technically, a SQLite database. Latest format version as of Feb 2018 is 1.3.

• Format specifications

Serving MBTiles

Since the only qualification for implementing languages is basic SQLite support, the logic is easily ported. A list of implementations is maintained by the project.

A simple PHP MBTiles Server script for serving image tiles only: https://github.com/asd20752/PHP-MBTiles-Server

A more sophisticated PHP TileServer supporting UTFGrid & TileJson: https://github.com/infostreams/mbtiles-php

With Apache, you can serve tiles from multiple MBTiles with a mod_mbtiles module: https://github.com/systemed/mod_mbtiles

Serving and unpacking MBtiles using Elixir and Phoenix https://github.com/dkuku/tile_server

• Demo: https://blog.thematicmapping.org/2012/11/exploring-mapbox-stack-mbtiles-tilejson.html

If you need more performance there is also a node.js server for image tiles only. https://github.com/asd20752/node-mbtiles

Data Download

MBTiles with OSM data for analysis are available from https://osmlab.github.io/osm-qa-tiles/ , these are provided by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and updated weekly. The planet, as well country extracts are available. These tiles were initially provided by Mapbox and made available daily.

The BBBike extract service offers mbtiles for an area of your choosing.

Generating MBTiles

Vespucci's documentation page Generating MBTiles files with custom imagery has a list of tools and resources for creating MBTiles files with custom data.

OpenSeaMap

You can get OpenSeaMap offline-charts in MBTiles-format:

• get MBTiles by the Download-Layer

Usable for:

Other uses

You can bring a layer into JOSM from an MBTiles database using JOSM/Plugins/Mbtiles

See also

• https://docs.mapbox.com/help/glossary/mbtiles/