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Maptalks.js

A light and plugable JavaScript library for integrated 2D/3D maps.

From maptalks·Updated June 29, 2026·View on GitHub·

maptalks is [upgrading to maptalks-gl](https://github.com/maptalks/maptalks.js/issues/2471), a webgl and webgpu driven 2D/3D map engine. The project is written primarily in HTML, first published in 2016. It has gained significant community traction with 4,520 stars and 513 forks on GitHub. Key topics include: gis, javascript, map, maps, maptalks.

Latest release: maptalks-gpu@0.124.4maptalks-gl@0.124.4 Released
March 4, 2026View Changelog →

maptalks-gl

NPM Version

NOTICE

maptalks is upgrading to maptalks-gl, a webgl and webgpu driven 2D/3D map engine.

If you are looking for the old maptalks source codes, it has moved to packages/maptalks as a submodule.

About

maptalks-gl will be a pure WebGL driven map engine with performance and rich features in 3D. maptalks-gl is in active development now, and will be officially published in few months.

With consistent API upgrade, you can easily migrate from legacy maptalks to maptalks-gl. (TBD)

If you are interested in what is going on, please refer to the previous releases notes of maptalks-gl.

Features

  • Vector Tile format support
  • 3DTiles format support
  • GLTF format support
  • Magnificant performance enhancement by WebGL
  • Rich 3D analysis functions
  • Traffic simulation animations

Usage

Install

shell
npm i maptalks-gl #or yarn add maptalks-gl #or pnpm i maptalks-gl

ESM

js
import { Map, GroupGLLayer, VectorTileLayer, GLTFMarker, GLTFLayer, PolygonLayer } from 'maptalks-gl'; const map = new Map('map', { center: [0, 0], zoom: 2 }); const vtLayer = new VectorTileLayer('vt', { urlTemplate: 'http://tile.maptalks.com/test/planet-single/{z}/{x}/{y}.mvt' }); const groupLayer = new GroupGLLayer('group', [vtLayer]).addTo(map); const gltfLayer = new GLTFLayer('gltflayer'); groupLayer.addLayer(gltfLayer); const polygonLayer = new PolygonLayer('polygonlayer'); groupLayer.addLayer(polygonLayer); //other layers

CDN

You can also reference umd-formatted packages via CDN, note that all exported variables under the gl system are automatically mounted in the maptalks namespace.

html
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://unpkg.com/maptalks-gl/dist/maptalks-gl.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> const map = new maptalks.Map('map', { center: [0, 0], zoom: 2 }); const vtLayer = new maptalks.VectorTileLayer('vt', { urlTemplate: 'http://tile.maptalks.com/test/planet-single/{z}/{x}/{y}.mvt' }); const groupLayer = new maptalks.GroupGLLayer('group', [vtLayer]).addTo(map); const gltfLayer = new maptalks.GLTFLayer('gltflayer'); groupLayer.addLayer(gltfLayer) const polygonLayer = new maptalks.PolygonLayer('polygonlayer'); groupLayer.addLayer(polygonLayer); //other layers </script>

Optional transcoders

If you need to introduce optional draco, ktx2 and other gl format decoding plugins, just introduce the decoding plugins after introducing the summary package as before:

js
import { Map, Geo3DTilesLayer, GLTFLayer } from 'maptalks-gl'; import '@maptalks/transcoders.draco'; import '@maptalks/transcoders.crn'; import '@maptalks/transcoders.ktx2';

or with umd bundle:

html
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://unpkg.com/maptalks-gl/dist/maptalks-gl.css"> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://unpkg.com/maptalks-gl/dist/maptalks-gl.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://unpkg.com/@maptalks/transcoders.draco/dist/transcoders.draco.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://unpkg.com/@maptalks/transcoders.crn/dist/transcoders.crn.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://unpkg.com/@maptalks/transcoders.ktx2/dist/transcoders.ktx2.js"></script>

Packages introductions

basic libraries

  • gltf-loader gltf format parsing library.
  • reshader.gl A regl-based implementation of the 3D rendering interface, including renderer, scene, mesh, material and other commonly used rendering base classes and predefined rendering materials, such as PBR.

Map

  • maptalks maptalks library source codes.

Layers

  • gl WebGL base layer functionality, including GroupGLLayer, terrain, post-processing and various 3D mask implementations.
  • layer-3dtiles Implementation of the 3dtiles layer (Geo3DTilesLayer).
  • layer-gltf Implementation of gltf layer (GLTFLayer/GLTFMarker).
  • layer-video video layer (VideoLayer/VideoSurface) implementation

Vector tiles

  • vt-plugin Interface definition for the vector tile rendering plugin.
  • vt Vector tile layer (VectorTileLayer/GeoJSONVectorTileLayer) implementation.

Three-dimensional analysis

  • analysis Implementation of various 3D analysis functions.
  • traffic Implementation of traffic simulation.

transcoders

  • transcoders.crn crn format parsing library
  • transcoders.draco draco format parser library
  • transcoders.ktx ktx2 compressed texture format parser library.

Installation and compilation

node environment

The current minimum node environment is 18.16.1, if you don't meet the minimum node version requirement, you can use nvm / fnm to manage the node version.

pnpm version

Currently this project is using pnpm@9.x.

Install dependencies

shell
pnpm i

Compile

shell
pnpm build

Debugging

If you need to debug the code base in watch mode, and the target of the compilation contains the source code, run the following command in the root folder of package you are debugging:

shell
pnpm run dev

Test

The project uses karma or electron-mocha (vt vs. layer-3dtiles) as the test framework, and the test cases are written based on mocha syntax.

Run a full test of the project

Run npm test under each project.

Run the tests for the specified use case

shell
pnpm run tdd -- -g “spec keywords”
  • If the project is based on karma, you need to modify the test source code to specify the use cases to run via the only method in mocha, e.g..
js
it('spec name', () => {});

Change to:

js
it.only('spec name', () => {});

Contributors

Showing top 12 contributors by commit count.

View all contributors on GitHub →

This article is auto-generated from maptalks/maptalks.js via the GitHub API.Last fetched: 6/29/2026