MapVas

A map canvas showing OSM tiles with advanced visualization capabilities including temporal data support, interactive controls, and drawing functionality.

The repo contains two binaries:

• mapvas: Interactive map viewer with timeline controls, search, filtering, and drawing
• mapcat: Command-line tool equivalent to cat for displaying geographic data on the map

Setup

Make sure you have Rust installed (stable toolchain recommended).

• Install Rust.

Manually:

• Clone this repository.
• cd mapvas ; cargo install --path . --locked

Via cargo from crates.io:

• cargo install mapvas --locked

Via brew on MacOs:

• brew tap udho/mapvas && brew install mapvas

Usage

mapvas

Start mapvas and a map window will appear.

Interface Controls

Navigation & View:

Sidebar & UI:

Search & Navigation:

Timeline Controls (when temporal data loaded):

Data Management:

mapcat

Mapcat reads input from stdin or files and uses intelligent auto-parsing to detect the format, or you can specify a parser explicitly. It uses various parsers to handle different data formats. It shows the parsed result on a single instance of mapvas, which it spawns if none is running.

Auto Parser (default)

The auto parser (default since v0.2.6) intelligently detects input format:

• File extension detection: Uses .geojson, .json, .gpx, .kml, .xml extensions with fallback chains
• Content analysis: For stdin/piped data, analyzes content patterns to determine format
• Smart fallbacks: TTJson → JSON → GeoJSON → Grep for JSON files, with format-specific chains for others

# Auto-detect format from file extension
mapcat data.geojson
mapcat routes.gpx
mapcat points.kml

# Auto-detect format from piped content
curl 'https://api.example.com/geojson' | mapcat
cat coordinates.txt | mapcat

Explicit Parser Selection

You can override auto-detection and specify a parser explicitly:

# Force specific parser
mapcat -p grep data.txt
mapcat -p geojson data.json
mapcat -p ttjson routes.json

Available parsers: auto (default), grep, ttjson, json, geojson, gpx, kml

Grep Parser

This parser greps for coordinates latitude and longitude as float in a line. In addition it supports colors and filling of polygons.

The input can come from a pipe or from files.

    mapcat <files_with_coordinates>

Examples:

• draws a point at Berlin Alexanderplatz:

    echo "52.521853, 13.413015" | mapcat

• draws a line between Berlin and Cologne and a red line between Cologne and Amsterdam:

    echo "50.942878, 6.957936 52.521853, 13.413015 green\n 50.942878, 6.957936 52.373520, 4.899766 red" | mapcat

• draws a yellow polyline Cologne-Berlin-Amsterdam:

    echo "50.942878, 6.957936 random garbage words 52.521853, 13.413015 yellow spaces after the coordinate-comma is not important: 52.373520,4.899766" | mapcat

• draws a blue transparently filled polygon Cologne-Berlin-Amsterdam note that a fill ("transparent" or "solid"):

    echo "50.942878, 6.957936 52.521853, 13.413015 52.373520,4.899766 blue transparent" | mapcat

Filling a polyline causes it to be drawn as closed polygon.

• drawing flexpolylines or google polylines

    echo BFoz5xJ67i1B1B7PzIhaxL7Y | mapcat
    echo '_p~iF~ps|U_ulLnnqC_mqNvxq@' | mapcat

• --invert-coordinates (-i) reverses the order of lat/lon:

    echo "13.413015, 52.521853" | mapcat -i

• clears all elements from the map.

echo "clear" | mapcat

The -r parameter clears the map before drawing new elements.

echo "52.5,12.5" | mapcat -r

• --label-pattern (-l) defines a label pattern. A near label is shown when right click on the map happens. The label is copied (when shown) via the c key. The label requires exactly one capture group to be in the pattern. Default is "(.*)" which captures everything.

echo "52.4,12.4" | mapcat -l "(.*)"

• --focus (-f) zooms and pans to show all elements on the map.

• --screenshot <file.png> takes a screenshot of the map. If mapvas is not already running it should probably be combined with -f. If the path to the file is relative (or the S key is used) the screenshot will be saved in the working directory unless MAPVAS_SCREENSHOT_PATH is set.

Random (for performance testing)

Draws a random polyline of a given length. The following command draws a random walk consisting of 20000 polylines of a random length between 1 and 10.

    echo "20000" | mapcat -p random

TTJson

Draws routes or ranges from the TomTom routing api.

curl 'https://api.tomtom.com/routing/1...' | mapcat -p ttjson -c green

Directional Data Support

MapVas supports displaying directional information for point geometries:

Heading support:

• Supported fields: heading, bearing, direction, course (in order of precedence)
• Works with GeoJSON, JSON, and TTJson formats
• Heading values in degrees (0° = North, clockwise)
• Configurable arrow styles in settings

// GeoJSON example with heading
{
  "type": "Feature",
  "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [13.4, 52.5] },
  "properties": { "heading": 45.0, "label": "Northeast direction" }
}

Advanced usage

Configuration

MapVas uses a configuration file located at ~/.config/mapvas/config.json. The configuration file is automatically created on first run with default settings.

You can also set MAPVAS_CONFIG environment variable to use a custom config directory.

Example configuration:

{
  "tile_provider": [
    {
      "name": "OpenStreetMap",
      "url": "https://tile.openstreetmap.org/{zoom}/{x}/{y}.png"
    },
    {
      "name": "TomTom",
      "url": "https://api.tomtom.com/map/1/tile/basic/main/{zoom}/{x}/{y}.png?tileSize=512&key=***"
    }
  ],
  "tile_cache_dir": "/Users/username/.mapvas_tile_cache",
  "commands_dir": "/Users/username/.config/mapvas/commands",
  "search_providers": [
    {"Coordinate": null},
    {"Nominatim": {"base_url": null}}
  ],
  "heading_style": "Arrow"
}

Tile Caching

Tile caching is enabled by default and tiles are stored in ~/.mapvas_tile_cache. You can change this location in the config file or disable it by setting tile_cache_dir to null.

Performance Profiling

# Run with profiling enabled
cargo run --bin mapvas --features profiling

# View profiling data
cargo install puffin_viewer
puffin_viewer --url=http://127.0.0.1:8585

Environment Variables