Using Mapbox GL Offline

Question

Is there a way to use Mapbox GL (asking about both JS and native) in an offline setting? With MBTiles, you could use either the MBTiles file or extract the raster images. I'm wondering if there's anything similar that would allow Mapbox GL to load the data from a local source as opposed to requiring a web connection to Mapbox's servers. Not talking about just caching data for when the user is offline but actually making a map that runs purely offline all the time. Thanks.

Answer 1

A sample of MapBox GL JS offline (completely hosted on a custom server, in this case GitHub gh-pages) is visible at:

http://klokantech.github.io/mapbox-gl-js-offline-example/

The javascript, css, fonts and even the pre-rendered vector tiles unpacked from MBTiles may be simply in a directory and you get the zoomable vector map.

In case you want to host MBTiles with the vector or raster tiles somewhere online for free, easiest is probably: https://github.com/klokantech/tileserver-php/

While playing with the vector tiles I documented most of the use-cases in these two repos:

• https://github.com/klokantech/vector-tiles-sample
• https://github.com/klokantech/mapbox-gl-js-offline-example

Answer 2

Not yet, but this is on the development roadmap for native, at least:

https://github.com/mapbox/mapbox-gl-native/issues/584

It's trickier with JavaScript in the browser, not not really a core use case, but could maybe be done.