Add support for Mapbox vector tiles and styling

[gberaudo]

There is currently strong interest in Mabox vector tiles. To stay relevant we should consider adding support for MVT to the print.

Jira issue in geotools: https://osgeo-org.atlassian.net/browse/GEOT-5626

Actual state in geotools:

• https://github.com/geotools/geotools/pulls?q=is%3Apr+mapbox+is%3Aclosed

[ipasic]

Any news on this one?

[sbrunner]

Pull request welcome :-)

[reed-tom]

Has support for Vector Tile services (like ESRI community basemaps) been added to Mapfish print?

[sbrunner]

Not for the moment...

[gberaudo]

An alternative is to render MVT layers client side and send them to the print so that they can be composed with the other layers. The good points of this solution is that:

• we get the same rendering as in the client side (same supported features, same look and feel);
• client side styling is supported out-of the box (dynamic custom style, OL style functions, ...);
• greatly reduced maintainance (MVT rendering implemented only once).

To achieve that I created a small low level library https://github.com/geoblocks/print/ that handles the rendering part. Then the images are sent to Map Fish Print has a "static image". Contact me for examples of integration.