Table of Contents
Overview
Mapnik supports a Plugin architecture read access to a variety of formats.
Some plugins have been written in C++ and require no external dependencies, while others require access to a supporting C or C++ library (like libpq for postgis/postgresql and libgdal for gdal/org support).
Interested in developing a new plugin see: DevelopingPlugins
All current plugins are either located in plugins/input in the source tree, or in the mapnik/non-core-plugins repository.
Name | Availability | Status | Build by Default | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
postgis | 0.2.0 | Stable | yes | support for accessing geospatial data through PostGIS, the spatial database extension for PostgreSQL |
raster | 0.2.0 | Stable | yes | stripped or tiled raster TIFF image dataset support |
shape | 0.2.0 | Stable | yes | vector SHP (ESRI Shapefile) parsing |
gdal | 0.5.0 | Beta | no | support for GDAL datasets |
ogr | 0.6.0 | Beta | no | support for OGR datasets |
osm | 0.6.0 | Beta | no | support for reading OpenStreetMap (OSM) xml datasets |
sqlite | 0.6.0 | Beta | no | support for SQLite / Spatialite sql vector format |
occi | 0.6.0 | Beta | no | support for oracle spatial 10g/11g (versions 10.2.0.x and 11.2.0.x) (Oracle Spatial) sql vector format |
kismet | 2.1? | Alpha | no | support for Kismet GPS; shows little WLAN nodes on the map |
rasterlite | 2.1? | Experimental | no | support for Rasterlite sqlite raster with wavelet compression |
geos | 2.1? | Experimental | no | support for inline WKT geometries using GEOS library |
[python](Python Plugin) | 2.1 | Experimental | yes | support for generating features dynamically using the Python programming language |
[geojson](GeoJSON Plugin) | 2.1 | Experimental | no | support for reading features from GeoJSON data |
[csv](CSV Plugin) | 2.1 | unknown | no | support for reading lon/lat, GeoJSON, or WKT from CSV data |
pgraster | 3.0 | Stable | yes | support for loading raster data from PostGIS |
[topojson](TopoJSON Plugin) | 3.0 | unknown | no | support for loading features from TopoJSON data |
Note: When compiling Mapnik from source only the PostGIS, Raster, and Shape plugins will be compiled by default.
To request additional plugins to be compiled and installed make sure you have the required dependencies and then specify the list of plugins for SCons to build:
# attempt to build all plugins possible
$ python scons/scons.py INPUT_PLUGINS='all'
# build just the postgis plugin:
$ python scons/scons.py INPUT_PLUGINS='postgis'
# to compile the plugins statically with mapnik library (https://github.com/mapnik/mapnik/tree/static-plugins)
$ python scons/scons.py INPUT_PLUGINS='all' PLUGIN_LINKING='static'
Querying plugins
If you compiled Mapnik with DEBUG=True, then the list of plugins registered by the python bindings will during initial import:
Python 2.5.1 (r251:54863, Jan 17 2008, 19:35:17)
>>> import mapnik
registered datasource : gdal
registered datasource : raster
registered datasource : shape
Otherwise, get a listing of available plugins with this command:
$ python -c "from mapnik import DatasourceCache as c; print ','.join(c.plugin_names())"
These are the registered datasource plugins that Mapnik's python binding currently knows about.