Mapbox GL JS is a great library for visualising geospatial data in an interactive map on a web site. The library provides many different ways of rendering data, from markers for single points to fully 3D extruded polygons!
Mapbox also provide some really nice basemaps to give context to your data and the Mapbox Studio to create your own basemaps.
The library allows easy importing of Vector Tiles and GeoJSON as data sources and then render this data on the map using layers.
We're going to create a webpage with a full-page interactive map using Mapbox GL JS (v1). The map will be focused on Douala, Cameroon. This tutorial assumes that you know how to create a basic webpage.
There is a v2 of Mapbox GL JS, it adds some really nice new shiny things and performance increases. But it also charges for each time the map is loaded; there is very generous monthly free tier, but I'm just really cheap and hoping many people view my stuff ;)
First step is to create a directory with the following directory structure:
index.html
src/style.css
src/index.js
Create a basic webpage in index.html with a div that has an id of map. Later on the map will be loaded into this div.
Also add in links to:
style.css in the header and
index.js in the body, under the div.
Your index.html file should look like this
Click to show
<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8" /> <title>My first Mapbox GL JS map!</title> <meta name="viewport" content="initial-scale=1,maximum-scale=1,user-scalable=no" /> <link href="src/style.css" rel="stylesheet" /> </head> <body> <div id="map"></div> </body> <script src="src/index.js"></script> </html>
To show a map on the webpage, we need to import the Mapbox GL JS library and associated CSS.
In the header we need to add the Mapbox GL JS CSS before our CSS:
<link href="https://api.mapbox.com/mapbox-gl-js/v1.13.1/mapbox-gl.css" rel="stylesheet" />
And between the div and index.js, in the body add the Mapbox GL JS file:
<script src="https://api.mapbox.com/mapbox-gl-js/v1.13.1/mapbox-gl.js"></script>
Your index.html file should look like this
Click to show
<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8" /> <title>My first Mapbox GL JS map!</title> <meta name="viewport" content="initial-scale=1,maximum-scale=1,user-scalable=no" /> <link href="https://api.mapbox.com/mapbox-gl-js/v1.13.1/mapbox-gl.css" rel="stylesheet" /> <link href="src/style.css" rel="stylesheet" /> </head> <body> <div id="map"></div> </body> <script src="https://api.mapbox.com/mapbox-gl-js/v1.13.1/mapbox-gl.js"></script> <script src="src/index.js"></script> </html>
Two little CSS things here:
Removing the padding from the body
Making the map div the size of the page
In the style.css file add the following:
body { margin: 0; padding: 0; } #map { height: 100vh; width: 100vw; }
Mapbox GL JS (v1) requires a Mapbox access token to use any of the Mapbox created or hosted basemaps. This is set by assigning it to the accessToken property of the library.
mapboxgl.accessToken = "<your access token here>";
To create the map, we call the Map constructor and pass an object of options to it. There are a lot of options that can be set, we wil be setting 4:
container: The id of the div the map will be placed into.
style: The style of the basemap.
center: The longitude and latitude that the map is centred on when created.
zoom: The zoom level of the map initially.
new mapboxgl.Map({ container: "map", style: "mapbox://styles/mapbox/streets-v11", center: [9.698718, 4.054859], zoom: 11, });