MBUtil

MBUtil is a utility for importing and exporting the MBTiles format, typically created with Mapbox TileMill.

Before exporting tiles to disk, see if there's a Mapbox Hosting plan or an open source MBTiles server implementation that works for you - tiles on disk are notoriously difficult to manage.

Note well: this project is no longer actively developed. Issues and pull requests will be attended to when possible, but delays should be expected.

Installation

Install with pip:

pip3 install smellman-mbutil

or use sudo if you want to install it globally:

sudo pip3 install smellman-mbutil --break-system-packages

or clone the repository and install it manually:

git clone https://github.com/smellman/mbutil.git
cd mbutil
uv venv
source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install .

Usage

Usage: mb-util [options] input output

    Examples:

    Export an mbtiles file to a directory of files:
    $ mb-util world.mbtiles dumps # when the 2nd argument is "dumps", then dumps the metatdata.json

    Export an mbtiles file to a directory of files:
    $ mb-util world.mbtiles tiles # tiles must not already exist

    Import a directory of tiles into an mbtiles file:
    $ mb-util tiles world.mbtiles # mbtiles file must not already exist

Options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --scheme=SCHEME       Tiling scheme of the tiles. Default is "xyz" (z/x/y),
                        other options are "tms" which is also z/x/y but uses a
                        flipped y coordinate, and "wms" which replicates the
                        MapServer WMS TileCache directory structure
                        "z/000/000/x/000/000/y.png"
  --image_format=FORMAT
                        The format of the image tiles, either png, jpg, webp,
                        pbf or mvt
  --grid_callback=CALLBACK
                        Option to control JSONP callback for UTFGrid tiles. If
                        grids are not used as JSONP, you can remove callbacks
                        specifying --grid_callback=""
  --do_compression      Do mbtiles compression
  --silent              Dictate whether the operations should run silently

Export an mbtiles file to files on the filesystem:

mb-util World_Light.mbtiles adirectory

Import a directory into a mbtiles file

mb-util directory World_Light.mbtiles

Requirements

• Python >= 3.8

Metadata

MBUtil imports and exports metadata as JSON, in the root of the tile directory, as a file named metadata.json.

{
    "name": "World Light",
    "description": "A Test Metadata",
    "version": "3"
}

Testing

This project uses pytest for testing. Install pytest:

uv venv
source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install hatch
hatch env create
hatch test

Building from Source

To build from source, clone the repository and run:

hatch build

See Also

• node-mbtiles provides mbpipe, a useful utility.
• mbliberator a similar program but in node.

License

BSD - see LICENSE.md

Authors

• Tom MacWright (tmcw)
• Dane Springmeyer (springmeyer)
• Mathieu Leplatre (leplatrem)