Serving Spatial Data
The dataset is finished. Now other people need it over HTTP.
Sending a colleague a 400 MB GeoPackage works exactly once. An API is what you build when the data changes, the audience is more than one person, or a map in a browser needs the part of it that is on screen. These guides cover the shapes a spatial service can take — features, tiles and imagery — the filters and paging that keep a response small, the caching that makes the second request free, and the failures that only appear once somebody else is pointing a browser at it.
The route goes from deciding what to serve — files, features or tiles — through the standards that mean callers already know how to ask, to the caching that decides whether the service survives being popular. Paging appears early on purpose: an endpoint with no limit is a denial of service you wrote yourself.
Start here
The cornerstone guide — the whole workflow end to end. Everything after it goes deeper into one part of it.
Step 1 Serving Spatial Data Explained: Files, Features and Tiles serving spatial data api Begin the path →The full path, in order
The concepts underneath the work, then each task, then the errors that task produces. Work down, or jump to the step you need.
- OGC API Features Explained: The Standard Behind Modern Spatial APIs ogc api features explained 🧭 Concept
- How to Add Bounding Box and Attribute Filters to a Spatial API spatial api bbox filter ⚙️ How-To
- How to Paginate a Large Feature API in Python paginate feature api python ⚙️ How-To
- GeoJSON, Vector Tiles or Parquet: Choosing an API Response Format api response format geojson 🧭 Concept
- How to Implement OGC API Features in Python implement ogc api features ⚙️ How-To
- Dynamic Tile Server or Static Tiles: What to Serve tile server vs static tiles 🧭 Concept
- How to Serve Vector Tiles from PostGIS with ST_AsMVT serve vector tiles postgis ⚙️ How-To
- How to Serve Raster Tiles from a COG with TiTiler serve raster tiles titiler ⚙️ How-To
- HTTP Caching for Spatial Data: ETags, Max-Age and Invalidation http caching spatial data 🧭 Concept
- How to Set Cache Headers on a Spatial API and Tile Service cache headers spatial api ⚙️ How-To
- How to Stream Large Query Results from a Spatial API stream large api response ⚙️ How-To
- Authentication and Rate Limits for a Spatial API spatial api authentication 🧭 Concept
- How to Rate Limit and Throttle a Spatial API rate limit spatial api ⚙️ How-To
- How to Test a Spatial API with pytest and httpx test spatial api pytest ⚙️ How-To
- Fixing CORS Errors on a Spatial API spatial api cors error 🔧 Fix
- Fixing a Tile Endpoint That Returns 404 or Blank Tiles tile endpoint 404 blank 🔧 Fix
- Fixing a Spatial API That Is Slow Under Load spatial api slow under load 🔧 Fix
- Fixing Coordinates in the Wrong Order in an API Response api coordinates wrong order 🔧 Fix
- Fixing an API Worker That Runs Out of Memory api worker out of memory 🔧 Fix
Topics this path covers
A path is a route; a topic is everything the site has on a subject. Open a topic to see the guides this path skips.