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MVT Format

Description​

Mapbox Vector Tiles (MVT) are compact binary tiles that encode layered vector features for web maps. IterableData decodes a tile with mapbox-vector-tile and flattens features from all layers into row dicts. It is read-only in this release. Aliases: pbf.

File Extensions​

  • .mvt — Mapbox Vector Tile
  • .pbf — Protocol Buffer tile alias (same decoder)

Implementation Details​

Reading​

  • Reads the entire tile as binary, then mapbox_vector_tile.decode(...)
  • Iterates every layer and yields one dict per feature
  • Record shape: layer, geometry, properties, type, id
  • totals() sums features across layers

Writing​

Writing is not supported (WriteNotSupportedError). Produce tiles with dedicated MVT tooling, or use GeoJSONSeq / GeoParquet for writeable feature pipelines.

Key Features​

  • Multi-layer flatten: all layers in one iterator
  • Layer name preserved: each feature includes its source layer
  • Binary datamode: codec wrappers apply when present

Usage​

from iterable import open_iterable

with open_iterable("tile.mvt") as source:
    for feature in source:
        print(feature["layer"], feature.get("properties"), feature.get("geometry"))

Parameters​

No format-specific iterableargs.

Installation​

pip install 'iterabledata[mvt]'
# or (includes mapbox-vector-tile among other geospatial deps)
pip install 'iterabledata[geospatial]'

Limitations​

  1. Read-only
  2. Whole-tile decode: the tile is loaded into memory
  3. Requires mapbox-vector-tile
  4. Geometry coordinates are in tile-local space as returned by the decoder

Error Handling​

  • ImportError: missing mapbox-vector-tile
  • WriteNotSupportedError: any write mode
  • FormatParseError: tile bytes that fail to decode
  • I/O errors: missing or unreadable files