Starlet
Spatial tiling, Mapbox Vector Tile (MVT) generation, and on-demand tile serving for large geospatial datasets (GeoParquet / GeoJSON).
The pipeline is: partition a dataset into spatial tiles → build density histograms → (optionally) pre-generate MVTs → serve them over HTTP.
Install
pip install starlet
Requires Python 3.10+. This installs the starlet command-line tool.
Want to work on Starlet itself (run from a clone, run the tests)? See DEVELOPMENT.md.
Quick start
Turn a GeoParquet or GeoJSON file into a running tile server in two commands:
# 1. Build a dataset: partition into tiles + pre-generate vector tiles
starlet build --input data.parquet --outdir datasets/mydata
# 2. Serve it
starlet serve --dir datasets --port 8765
Then open http://localhost:8765 and pick your dataset to explore it on a map.
Commands
Everything is available through the starlet CLI (starlet --help).
starlet build — full pipeline (tile + MVT)
starlet build --input data.parquet --outdir datasets/mydata --zoom 8
| Flag | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
--input |
(required) | Path to a GeoParquet or GeoJSON file |
--outdir |
(required) | Output dataset directory |
--zoom |
7 | Maximum MVT zoom level |
--partition-size |
512mb (GeoJSON) / 128mb (GeoParquet) | Target partition size, e.g. 256mb, 1gb |
--threshold |
100000 | Minimum feature count per MVT tile |
--pmtiles |
off | Also export a single .pmtiles archive |
starlet tile — partition a dataset only
starlet tile --input data.parquet --outdir datasets/mydata
| Flag | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
--input |
(required) | Path to a GeoParquet or GeoJSON file |
--outdir |
(required) | Output dataset directory |
--partition-size |
512mb (GeoJSON) / 128mb (GeoParquet) | Target partition size; the number of tiles is derived from the input size |
--sort |
zorder | Within-tile row order: zorder, hilbert, columns, none |
--orchestrator |
two-stage | Tiling engine: two-stage (fast, map-reduce) or round |
--geojson-executor |
process | process for large files, thread for small GeoJSON |
--covering-bbox |
off | Write per-row bbox columns for faster on-demand serving |
--geom-col |
geometry | Geometry column name (e.g. wkb_geometry for OGR exports) |
--compression |
zstd | Parquet compression codec |
starlet mvt — generate vector tiles from a tiled dataset
starlet mvt --dir datasets/mydata --zoom 7 --threshold 100000
| Flag | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
--dir |
(required) | Dataset directory (contains parquet_tiles/ and histograms/) |
--zoom |
7 | Maximum zoom level |
--threshold |
0 | Minimum feature count per tile |
--outdir |
<dir>/mvt/ |
MVT output directory |
starlet serve — launch the tile server
starlet serve --dir datasets --port 8765
| Flag | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
--dir |
(required) | Root directory containing dataset subdirectories |
--host |
0.0.0.0 | Host to bind |
--port |
8765 | Port to bind |
--cache-size |
256 | In-memory tile cache size |
starlet info — inspect a dataset
starlet info --dir datasets/mydata
Server API
Once starlet serve is running:
| Method | Path | Description |
|---|---|---|
GET |
/ |
Interactive dataset selector |
GET |
/api/datasets |
List all datasets |
GET |
/datasets/<dataset>.json |
Dataset metadata |
GET |
/<dataset>/<z>/<x>/<y>.mvt |
Mapbox Vector Tile |
GET/POST |
/datasets/<dataset>/features.<csv|geojson> |
Download features (optional geometry filter) |
GET |
/api/datasets/<dataset>/stats |
Attribute statistics |
Notes & tips
- Big GeoJSON? The default
processexecutor parallelizes reading. For small files (<10 MB) add--geojson-executor threadto skip process-pool startup overhead. - Geometry column not named
geometry(common with OGR/pyogrioexports)? Pass--geom-col wkb_geometry. - Serving tiles on the fly (zooming past the pre-generated levels)? Build
with
--covering-bboxso the server can prune row groups at read time. - One-file distribution:
starlet build --pmtileswrites a singledatasets/mydata.pmtilesarchive alongside the dataset.
Deploying a server
See docs/DEPLOYMENT.md for a step-by-step guide to standing up a production tile server, including a no-root recipe behind an existing Apache install.
License
See the repository for license details.
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