The UTFGrid encoding scheme encodes interactivity data for a tile in a space efficient manner. It is designed to be used in browsers, e.g. for displaying tooltips when hovering over certain features of a map tile.
Since slower browsers and machines can't cope with rendering the actual polygons used to draw vectors on the map tile, we use a grid-based approach where we store the associated information for each pixel.
UTFGrid uses JSON as a container format. It is exclusively geared towards square tiles.
To achieve reasonable speed in browsers, we store information for a pixel in long strings, where each character's Unicode code point is the key for retrieving the information associated with that pixel. When we have less than 96 unique IDs, this means that the space taken up by storing each pixel separately is 256 * 256 = 64 KB. Gzipping the grid data typically reduces it to a size below 2K.
By default, UTFGrid operates on a 4x4 grid, meaning that a tile at zoom level
0 that contains the entire world in its extent will have an grid resolution
of 64x64. We take advantage of UTF-8's variable length codepoint encoding:
all ASCII characters are encoded as is, that means that the first 94 codepoints
are encoded with their code number as a single byte (codes 0x20, 0x21,
0x23-0x5B and 0x5D-0x7F).
IDs with a number larger than that will get encoded as multiple bytes.
JSON doesn't allow control characters, "
and \ to be encoded as their literal UTF-8 representation. Encoding an
ID works as follows:
- Add 3210.
- If the result is >= 3410, add 1.
- If the result is >= 9210, add 1.
This ensures that all characters that cannot be represented natively are skipped.
Decoding works as follows:
- If the codepoint is >= 9310, subtract 1.
- If the codepoint is >= 3510, subtract 1.
- Subtract 3210.
The UTFgrid file contains an array in a property named grid at the root level.
Each entry represents a row in the grid. Each array entry is a string that
contains the UTF-8 encoded codepoint for each column. The string length
corresponds to the number of entries in the grid array. Only powers of two are allowed.
The keys are stored in an array named keys at the root level. The index of
each key represents the ID that it is associated to.
Retrieving a key from a coordinate works as follows (json is the root level
object, x and y are the coordinates, starting from top left at 0, and
size is the number of entries in the grid key):
var factor = 256 / size, row = y / factor, col = x / factorvar id = json.grid[row].charCodeAt(col);is the character that contains the encoded ID.- Decode the id as described in "Encoding IDs".
var key = json.keys[id];retrieves the ID associated with the coordinate.
All divisions are integer divisions.
The JSON file may contain an optional data property at the root level.
If it isn't present, the client looks up the obtained key in its internal data
store. If the lookup key is not present, it queries the server with the
missing keys. If the data property is present, but the key cannot be found,
the client must behave as if there were no data property.
An empty key signifies the unavailability of information for that pixel.
No action may be taken to retrieve data for an empty ("") key.
{ "grid":
[ " !!!#########",
" !!!#########",
" !!!!#########",
" !!!##########",
" !! !!!##########",
" !!!#########",
" !!######### ",
" ! !!! ####### ",
" ### ",
" $ ",
" $$ %%",
" $$$$$$$%%",
" $$$$$$$%%",
" $$$$$$$$$%%",
" $$$$$$$$$$%%",
" $$$$$$$$$$$$%",
" $$$$$$$$$%%%%",
" $$$$$$$$$%%%%%",
" $$$$$$$$%%%%%%",
" $$$$$$$%%%%%%%",
" $$$$%%%%%%%%%%",
" $$$$%%%%%%%%%%%",
" # # # $$$$$%%%%%%%%%%%%",
" $$$$$$$%%%%%%%%%%%%",
" $$$&&&&'%%%%%%%%%%%",
" $$$$&&&&'''%%%%%%%%%",
" $$$$'''''''''%%%%%%%%",
" $$$$'''''''''''%%%%%%",
" $$$$&''''''''((((%%%%%",
" $$$&&''''''''(((((%%%%",
" $$$&&'''''''''(((((((%%",
" $$$&&''''''''''(((((((%",
" $$$&&&''''''''''((((((((",
" ''''''''''''''''((((((((",
" '''''''''''''''((((((((",
" '''''''''''''''((((((((",
" '''''''''''''''((((((((",
" '''''''''''''''((((((((",
" '''''''''''''''((((((((",
" ) '''''''''''''''((((((((",
" ***'''''''''''''(((((((",
" *****'''''''''''(((((((",
" )) ******'''(((((((((((((((",
" *******(((((((((((((((++",
" *******(((((((((((((++++",
" ********((((((((((((++++",
" ***,,-**((((((((((++++++",
" ,,,,-------(((((+++++++",
" ,,---------(((((+++++.+",
" --------(((((+++....",
" -///----0000000....",
" ////----0000000....",
" /////1---0000000...",
" ///11--0000000....",
" 111110000000....",
" 11110000000....",
" 1111000000....",
" 1100 . ",
" ",
" ",
" ",
" ",
" ",
" " ],
"keys":
[ "",
"1",
"2",
"3",
"4",
"5",
"6",
"7",
"8",
"9",
"10",
"11",
"12",
"13",
"14",
"15",
"16" ],
"data":
{ "1": { "admin": "Portugal" },
"2": { "admin": "Spain" },
"3": { "admin": "Morocco" },
"4": { "admin": "Algeria" },
"5": { "admin": "Western Sahara" },
"6": { "admin": "Mauritania" },
"7": { "admin": "Mali" },
"8": { "admin": "Cape Verde" },
"9": { "admin": "Senegal" },
"10": { "admin": "Burkina Faso" },
"11": { "admin": "Guinea Bissau" },
"12": { "admin": "Guinea" },
"13": { "admin": "Ghana" },
"14": { "admin": "Sierra Leone" },
"15": { "admin": "Ivory Coast" },
"16": { "admin": "Liberia" } } }To test implementations, demo.json contains a grid that consists of 65501 different keys. This is the maximum possible in this version of UTFGrid. Implementors should check that obtaining a coordinate should return the key y * 256 + x for all x/y, with the exception of y = 255 and x >= 222 and x <= 255 returning 65501 due to the maximum codepoint allowed in JSON.
A dummy code validation routine is given here:
var json = JSON.parse(/* demo.json */);
// the resolution of the grid. adjust this for your grid.
var resolution = 4;
var key = 0,
dimension = 256 / resolution;
for (var y = 0; y < dimension; y++) {
for (var x = 0; x < dimension; x++) {
var code = json.grid[y].charCodeAt(x);
if (code >= 93) code--;
if (code >= 35) code--;
code -= 32;
assert(code == key);
if (key < 65501) key++;
}
}