hextile

Generate tile representations of polygon objects on map

Usage

import hextile from 'hextile'
 
hextile(geojson, options)

Refer to IETF's RFC7946 for accepted format of geojson input.

// alternatively, pass in a bounding box (bbox) input
const southWest = [103.582, 1.16]
const northEast = [104.1647, 1.48073]
const bbox = [southWest[0], southWest[1], northEast[0], northEast[1]]
 
hextile(bbox, options)

Options

/**
 * @param {('square'|'hexagon')} options.shape - default 'square'
 * @param {number} options.width - in metre, default 1000, min 500, max 500000
 * @param {number} options.tilt - in deg, default 0
 * @param {[number, number]} options.center - [lon, lat] of grid origin
 * @param {Object} options.projection - object exposing two methods 'forward' & 'inverse'
 * @param {Function} options.projection.forward - map lonlat to grid coordinates
 * @param {Function} options.projection.inverse - map grid coordinates to lonlat
 */

options.shape

hextile(geojson, {shape: 'square'})

options.width

hextile(geojson, {shape: 'hexagon', width: 500})
hextile(geojson, {shape: 'hexagon', width: 2000})

options.tilt

hextile(geojson, {shape: 'square', tilt: 45})
hextile(geojson, {shape: 'hexagon', tilt: 90})

options.center

// used when projecting lonlat to grid coordinates
// by default is set to center of geojson's bbox
// here we choose a latitude far away from equator
// to illustrate the distortion due to Earth's spherical nature
hextile(geojson, {shape: 'square', width: 1000, center: [103.8, 60]})

options.projection

By default, we use equirectangular projection (also called the equidistant cylindrical projection) for conversion between lonlat and grid coordinates based on the width and center supplied by options. When area is large and covers a wide range of latitudes (eg. the Africa continent), this projection method may not be ideal. Hence we provide an option to overwrite the default projection method.

projection object should exposes two methods forward and inverse (similar to Proj4js) which will be used internally by the hextile function for conversion between lonlat and grid coordinates.

Output

Output is an array of geojson features each representing one grid tile.

Eg.

[
  {
    "id": "0.0",
        "type": "Feature",
        "properties": {
            "address": [0,0],
            "center": [103.8470918851487,1.3147367663544147]
        },
        "geometry": {
            "type": "Polygon",
            "coordinates": [
                [
                    [103.85158967726275,1.3147367663544147],
                    [103.84934078120573,1.3186309431389038],
                    [103.84484298909167,1.3186309431389038],
                    [103.84259409303465,1.3147367663544147],
                    [103.84484298909167,1.3108425895699256],
                    [103.84934078120573,1.3108425895699256],
                    [103.85158967726275,1.3147367663544147]
                ]
            ]
        }
    },
    {
        "id": "M1.M2",
        "type": "Feature",
        "properties": {
            "address": [-1,-2],
            "center": [103.84034519697764,1.3186309431389038]
        },
        "geometry": {
            "type": "Polygon",
            "coordinates": [
                [
                    [103.84484298909167,1.3186309431389038],
                    [103.84259409303465,1.3225251199233932],
                    [103.83809630092061,1.3225251199233932],
                    [103.83584740486359,1.3186309431389038],
                    [103.83809630092061,1.3147367663544147],
                    [103.84259409303465,1.3147367663544147],
                    [103.84484298909167,1.3186309431389038]
                ]
            ]
        }
    }
]

CLI

> hextile -h

Usage: hextile [options] <infile> <outfile>

Generate tile representations of polygon objects on map

Options:

  -h, --help                        output usage information
  -s --shape <shape>                square or hexagon tile
  -w --width <metre>                set tile width
  -t --tilt <deg>                   rotate tile
  -c --center <longitude,latitude>  center map at