APIs & tile services
Serving features, tiles and imagery over HTTP: filters, paging, caching and the load that follows.
Everything on Spatial Workflow about apis & tile services, in the order that usually works: understand the idea, then run the task, then fix it when it goes wrong. 20 guides in total.
One learning path runs through this topic — follow it if you would rather work through a route than pick a single guide.
🧭 Start with the concepts
The ideas the how-to guides below assume you already have.
- Serving Spatial Data Explained: Files, Features and Tiles serving spatial data api
- OGC API Features Explained: The Standard Behind Modern Spatial APIs ogc api features explained
- GeoJSON, Vector Tiles or Parquet: Choosing an API Response Format api response format geojson
- Dynamic Tile Server or Static Tiles: What to Serve tile server vs static tiles
- HTTP Caching for Spatial Data: ETags, Max-Age and Invalidation http caching spatial data
- Authentication and Rate Limits for a Spatial API spatial api authentication
⚙️ Then do the task
Step-by-step walkthroughs with code you can copy and adapt.
- How to Add Bounding Box and Attribute Filters to a Spatial API spatial api bbox filter
- How to Paginate a Large Feature API in Python paginate feature api python
- How to Implement OGC API Features in Python implement ogc api features
- How to Serve Vector Tiles from PostGIS with ST_AsMVT serve vector tiles postgis
- How to Serve Raster Tiles from a COG with TiTiler serve raster tiles titiler
- How to Set Cache Headers on a Spatial API and Tile Service cache headers spatial api
- How to Stream Large Query Results from a Spatial API stream large api response
- How to Rate Limit and Throttle a Spatial API rate limit spatial api
- How to Test a Spatial API with pytest and httpx test spatial api pytest
🔧 When it breaks
The errors this topic produces, with the cause explained rather than just the command.
- Fixing CORS Errors on a Spatial API spatial api cors error
- Fixing a Tile Endpoint That Returns 404 or Blank Tiles tile endpoint 404 blank
- Fixing a Spatial API That Is Slow Under Load spatial api slow under load
- Fixing Coordinates in the Wrong Order in an API Response api coordinates wrong order
- Fixing an API Worker That Runs Out of Memory api worker out of memory
Learning paths through this topic
A curated route rather than a list — the guides in the order that builds on itself.
Related topics
Subjects that keep coming up alongside this one, most overlap first.