WXTiles API Product Documentation

WXTiles API enable weather data visualization for programmers. This documentation provides instructions for how to use WXTiles API in your project.

There are three main components of the product:

1. Splitter - a service that splits the datasets into tiles (PNG) and some metadata (JSON) served by a fileserver backend aka NGINX.
2. WxTiles-mbox source code, npm @metoceanapi/wxtiles-mbox - a JS API providing work with metadata, dataset manager and an implementation of a Custom MapBox-gl-gs Layer for visualizing the tiles using Mapbox-gl-gs.
3. WxTiles-leaflet source code, npm @metoceanapi/wxtiles-leaflet - a JS API providing work with metadata, dataset manager and an implementation of a Custom Leaflet Layer for visualizing the tiles using Leaflet.

API Description

The API can be used with 2 different frameworks: Leaflet and Mapbox-gl-gs. API for Leaflet and Mapbox-gl-gs are similar in many ways. The difference is in the framework-specific implementations of the Custom Source/Layer.

Usage and API documentation is mainly the same for both frameworks.

DOCS

• Mapbox-gl: https://metoceanapi.github.io/wxtiles-mbox/docs/
• Leaflet: https://metoceanapi.github.io/wxtiles-leaflet/docs/

Examples

MapBox-gl-js

import 'mapbox-gl/dist/mapbox-gl.css';
import mapboxgl from 'mapbox-gl';
import { WxAPI } from '@metoceanapi/wxtiles-mbox';

(async func(){
	// Get the API ready - there should be ONE per application
	// requestInit is used in every request to the server. Add your keys, credentials, mode, etc.
	const wxapi = new WxAPI({ dataServerURL: 'https://tiles.metoceanapi.com/data/',
		requestInit: { /* headers: new Headers([['x-api-key', 'key']]), */ } });

	// Create a dataset manager (may be used for many variables-layers from this dataset)
	const wxdatasetManager = await wxapi.createDatasetManager('gfs.global');

	// create a source layer
	const wxsource = wxdatasetManager.createSourceLayer({ variable:'air.temperature.at-2m' },
		{ id: 'wxsource', opacity: 1,attribution: 'WxTiles' });

	// add the layer to the map
    const map = new mapboxgl.Map({ container: 'map', accessToken:'token', style: { version: 8, name: 'Empty', sources: {}, layers: [] } });
    await map.once('load');
	map.addSource(wxsource.id, wxsource);
	map.addLayer({ id: 'wxlayer', type: 'raster', source: wxsource.id, paint: { 'raster-fade-duration': 0 /*NEDDED for animation*/ } });
})()

Leaflet

import 'leaflet/dist/leaflet.css';
import L from 'leaflet';
import { WxAPI } from '@metoceanapi/wxtiles-leaflet';

(async func(){
	// Get the API ready - there should be ONE per application
	// requestInit is used in every request to the server. Add your keys, credentials, mode, etc.
	const wxapi = new WxAPI({ dataServerURL: 'https://tiles.metoceanapi.com/data/',
		requestInit: { /* headers: new Headers([['x-api-key', 'key']]), */ } });

	// Create a dataset manager (may be used for many variables-layers from this dataset)
	const wxdatasetManager = await wxapi.createDatasetManager('gfs.global');

	// create a source layer
	const wxsource = wxdatasetManager.createSourceLayer({ variable:'air.temperature.at-2m' },
		{ id: 'wxsource', opacity: 1,attribution: 'WxTiles' });

	// add the layer to the map
	const map = L.map('map', { center: [0, 0], zoom: 2, zoomControl: true });
	map.addLayer(wxsource);
	await new Promise((done) => wxsource.once('load', done)); // highly recommended to await for the first load
})()

Change the time step

await wxsource.setTimeStep(1); // 1 - index of the time step in the dataset

or

await wxsource.setTimeStep('2020-01-01T00:00:00Z'); // '2020-01-01T00:00:00Z' - time step in the dataset

or

await wxsource.setTimeStep(2345323454); //  time in seconds since 1970-01-01T00:00:00Z

or

await wxsource.setTimeStep(new Date('2020-01-01T00:00:00Z')); // Date object

Update the style

await wxsource.updateCurrentStyleObject({ units: 'm/s', levels: undefined }); // set levels to undefined - to automatically calculate the levels from the dataset

Preload the time steps

// load the time step 10 to the cache but do not not render it
const prom = wxsource.preloadTime(10);
// do stuff asyncronously
// ...
await prom; // wait for the time step to finish loading
// now set the time step to 10
await wxsource.setTime(10); // will be fast rendered from the cache

Abort loading

const abortController = new AbortController();
console.log('setTime(5)');
const prom = wxsource.setTime(5, abortController);
abortController.abort(); // aborts the request
await prom; // await always !! even if aborted
console.log('aborted');

Get the current time step

const timeStep = wxsource.getTime();

read lon lat data

map.on('mousemove', (e) => {
	if (!wxsource) return;
	const pos = position(e); //
	const tileInfo: WxTileInfo | undefined = wxsource.getLayerInfoAtLatLon(pos.wrap(), map);
	if (tileInfo) {
		console.log(tileInfo);
	}
});

animated blur effect

(async function step(n: number = 0) {
	await wxsource.updateCurrentStyleObject({ isolineText: false, blurRadius: ~~(10 * Math.sin(n / 500) + 10) }); // await always !!
	requestAnimationFrame(step);
})();

more interactive - additional level and a bit of the red transparentness around the level made from current mouse position

await wxsource.updateCurrentStyleObject({ levels: undefined }); // reset levels if existing in the style
const levels = wxsource.getCurrentStyleObjectCopy().levels || []; // get current/default/any levels
// generate a new color map from the levels
const colMap: [number, string][] = levels.map((level) => [level, '#' + Math.random().toString(16).slice(2, 8) + 'ff']);
let busy = false;
map.on('mousemove', async (e) => {
	if (!wxsource || busy) return;
	busy = true;
	const tileInfo: WxTileInfo | undefined = wxsource.getLayerInfoAtLatLon(position(e), map);
	if (tileInfo) {
		await wxsource.updateCurrentStyleObject({ colorMap: [...colMap, [tileInfo.inStyleUnits[0], '#ff000000']] });
		onsole.log(tileInfo);
	}
	busy = false;
});