Overview

This geo services plugin allows applications to access Mapbox mapping services using the Qt Location API. The use of these services is governed by the Mapbox terms of service.

This plugin differs from the Mapbox plugin because it uses the Mapbox GL map engine for rendering both raster tiles and vector tiles in real-time. The benefits are: text staying upright, font antialiasing, labels flowing between zoom levels, smooth pan, tilt, rotation and continuous zoom.

The appearance and behavior of vector maps can be customized by creating custom map styles. This can be done with tools like Mapbox Studio.

The Mapbox GL geo services plugin can be loaded by using the plugin key "mapboxgl".

Both Mapbox geo services plugins require an access token to access map styles and tiles hosted by Mapbox. To create a Mapbox account visit https://www.mapbox.com/pricing.

Note: the API for this plugin is introduced in Qt 5.9 as technology preview.

Platform Support

Qt Location Mapbox GL Plugin has the following support for platforms:

• Microsoft Windows (win32) - Supported, requires MinGW 5.0+
• Linux X11 - Supported, requires GCC 4.9+
• macOS - Supported
• Android - Supported
• Embedded Linux - Supported, requires GCC 4.9+
• iOS - Supported
• WinRT - Not supported

Parameters

Optional plugin parameters

The following table lists optional parameters that can be passed to the Mapbox plugin.

Optional map parameters

The Map item using this plugin, can also be customized using MapParameters, allowing runtime changes to the map style and data.

Examples of what can be currently controlled using MapParameter are:

• Hide and show parts of the map, like roads and buildings.
• Change paint properties like color and opacity of various parts of the map.
• Change layout properties like thickness and line joints.
• Add data to the map.
• Add sprites to the map.

With the exception of extrusion and data driven style properties, every property described at the Mapbox Style Specification can be changed at runtime.

The MapParameters, used to control the style of the map at runtime, always have a type property, followed by user defined properties that try to match the Mapbox Style Specification naming as much as possible, replacing the dash with camel case for technical reasons (i.e. line-cap will be translated to lineCap).

Example usage

This example adds inline GeoJSON data to the map. Simply adding a source is not enough to get the data visible. It is also necessary to create a layer based on this source. After the layer is added, we also need to style its paint and layout properties. In this case we are changing the line color to blue, and the line width to 8 pixels, as well as also setting round line joints and caps.

Map {
    plugin: Plugin { name: "mapboxgl" }

    center: QtPositioning.coordinate(60.170448, 24.942046) // Helsinki
    zoomLevel: 12

    MapParameter {
        type: "source"

        property var name: "routeSource"
        property var sourceType: "geojson"
        property var data: '{ "type": "FeatureCollection", "features": \
            [{ "type": "Feature", "properties": {}, "geometry": { \
            "type": "LineString", "coordinates": [[ 24.934938848018646, \
            60.16830257086771 ], [ 24.943315386772156, 60.16227776476442 ]]}}]}'
    }

    MapParameter {
        type: "layer"

        property var name: "route"
        property var layerType: "line"
        property var source: "routeSource"

        // Draw under the first road label layer
        // of the mapbox-streets style.
        property var before: "road-label-small"
    }

    MapParameter {
        type: "paint"

        property var layer: "route"
        property var lineColor: "blue"
        property var lineWidth: 8.0
    }

    MapParameter {
        type: "layout"

        property var layer: "route"
        property var lineJoin: "round"
        property var lineCap: "round"
    }
}

Note that the order we add the parameters is important, because there is dependency between the parameters. Adding a layer before adding a source will create an invalid layer, same goes for adding a paint property for a layer that doesn't exist.

Paint and layout properties can also be used for styling existing layers of the current style, and not only layers created at runtime. Mapbox Studio can be used for inspecting layers of a given style.