🚀 Support This Project

If localtileserver saves you time, powers your work, or you need direct help, please consider supporting the project and my efforts:

🌐 Local Tile Server for Geospatial Rasters

Need to visualize a rather large (gigabytes+) raster? This is for you.

A Python package for serving tiles from large raster files in the Slippy Maps standard (i.e., /zoom/x/y.png) for visualization in Jupyter with ipyleaflet or folium.

Launch a demo on MyBinder

Documentation: https://localtileserver.banesullivan.com/

Built on rio-tiler and FastAPI

🌟 Highlights

• Launch a tile server for large geospatial images
• View local or remote raster files with ipyleaflet or folium in Jupyter
• Band math expressions for on-the-fly computed imagery (e.g., NDVI)
• Per-band statistics and multiple image stretch modes
• Multiple output formats: PNG, JPEG, WebP, GeoTIFF, NPY
• Spatial subsetting via bounding box crops and GeoJSON masks
• STAC item support for multi-asset catalogs
• Xarray DataArray tile serving (NetCDF, Zarr, etc.)
• Virtual mosaics from multiple raster files
• View rasters with CesiumJS with the built-in web application
• Full REST API powered by FastAPI with auto-generated OpenAPI docs

🚀 Usage

Usage details and examples can be found in the documentation: https://localtileserver.banesullivan.com/

The following is a minimal example to visualize a local raster file with ipyleaflet:

from localtileserver import get_leaflet_tile_layer, TileClient
from ipyleaflet import Map

# First, create a tile server from local raster file
client = TileClient('path/to/geo.tif')

# Create ipyleaflet tile layer from that server
t = get_leaflet_tile_layer(client)

m = Map(center=client.center(), zoom=client.default_zoom)
m.add(t)
m

Band Math Expressions

Compute derived imagery on the fly using band math expressions:

client = TileClient('path/to/multispectral.tif')

# NDVI: (NIR - Red) / (NIR + Red) where NIR=b4, Red=b1
t = get_leaflet_tile_layer(client, expression='(b4-b1)/(b4+b1)',
                           vmin=-1, vmax=1, colormap='RdYlGn')

STAC Support

Visualize assets from STAC catalogs:

import requests

# Fetch tiles from a STAC item's assets
resp = requests.get('http://localhost:PORT/api/stac/tiles/10/512/512.png',
                    params={'url': 'https://example.com/stac/item.json',
                            'assets': 'visual'})

Xarray DataArrays

Serve tiles directly from xarray DataArrays (NetCDF, Zarr, etc.):

import xarray as xr

ds = xr.open_dataset('temperature.nc')
da = ds['temperature']
da = da.rio.write_crs('EPSG:4326')

# Register and serve tiles through the REST API

ℹ️ Overview

The TileClient class can be used to launch a tile server in a background thread which will serve raster imagery to a viewer (usually ipyleaflet or folium in Jupyter notebooks).

This tile server can efficiently deliver varying resolutions of your raster imagery to your viewer; it helps to have pre-tiled, Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs (COGs).

There is an included, standalone web viewer leveraging CesiumJS.

REST API

The server exposes a comprehensive REST API built on FastAPI:

Endpoint	Description
GET /api/tiles/{z}/{x}/{y}.{fmt}	Raster tiles
GET /api/thumbnail.{fmt}	Thumbnail preview
GET /api/metadata	Raster metadata
GET /api/bounds	Geographic bounds
GET /api/statistics	Per-band statistics
GET /api/part.{fmt}	Bounding box crop
POST /api/feature.{fmt}	GeoJSON mask extraction
GET /api/stac/tiles/{z}/{x}/{y}.{fmt}	STAC item tiles
GET /api/xarray/tiles/{z}/{x}/{y}.{fmt}	Xarray DataArray tiles
GET /api/mosaic/tiles/{z}/{x}/{y}.{fmt}	Mosaic tiles
GET /swagger/	Interactive API docs

All tile/thumbnail endpoints support expression, stretch, indexes, colormap, vmin, vmax, and nodata query parameters.

⬇️ Installation

Get started with localtileserver to view rasters in Jupyter or deploy as your own FastAPI application.

🐍 Installing with conda

Conda makes managing localtileserver's dependencies across platforms quite easy and this is the recommended method to install:

conda install -c conda-forge localtileserver

🎡 Installing with pip

If you prefer pip, then you can install from PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/localtileserver/

pip install localtileserver

Optional Dependencies

For xarray/DataArray support:

pip install localtileserver[xarray]

For Jupyter widget integration:

pip install localtileserver[jupyter]

For additional colormaps:

pip install localtileserver[colormaps]

💭 Feedback

Please share your thoughts and questions on the Discussions board. If you would like to report any bugs or make feature requests, please open an issue.

If filing a bug report, please share a scooby Report:

import localtileserver
print(localtileserver.Report())