AWS Integration ​

The AWS Deployment option is based on CloudFormation, which automates the creation and deletion of all resources. You don't need to install anything; simply upload a YAML to the AWS Console.

At the end of this walkthrough, you'll have a CDN-cached ZXY API, compatible with all major map renderers, serving tiles from a private S3 bucket.

Installation ​

1. Upload to S3 ​

The CloudFormation template is designed to work with an existing S3 bucket.

If you need to create a new one:

• Open the S3 Console and choose Create Bucket.
• Choose a globally unique bucket name, and any region, just remember the region name.
  • We'll use protomaps-example as a placeholder bucket name.
  • Leave the default ACLs disabled and Block all public access setting.
  • Leave other options as the default and proceed with Create Bucket.
• Upload a PMTiles archive. For example, save this file as example.pmtiles. Upload to your bucket via the Web Console or a tool like rclone.

2. CloudFormation Template ​

1. In the CloudFormation console for your AWS region, choose Create Stack > With new resources (standard).

2. Choose Specify Template > Upload a template file and upload the file cloudformation-stack.yaml.

3. Provide a stack name of your choice.

4. for Parameters, specify:

• The allowed CORS origins. By default, all sites (*) are authorized to make requests. Specify a comma-separated allowlist of sites e.g. example.com,example.io.

• The name of the bucket from step 1.

• The CloudFront cache TTL, which is how long tiles will be cached at the edge. Default 1 day.

• (Optional) the public hostname for TileJSON. If you plan to add a custom domain like tiles.example.com, enter that here. Otherwise leave this blank for the default *.cloudfront.net hostname.

5. Proceed with Next > Submit, acknowledging that it might create IAM resources.

This may take a few minutes to create the CDN distribution. When that's complete, you will have a URL like AAAA.cloudfront.net that can be accessed directly from browsers:

https://SUBDOMAIN.cloudfront.net/TILESET.json # TileJSON for MapLibre
https://SUBDOMAIN.cloudfront.net/TILESET/{z}/{x}/{y}.{ext}

https://SUBDOMAIN.cloudfront.net/TILESET.json # TileJSON for MapLibre
https://SUBDOMAIN.cloudfront.net/TILESET/{z}/{x}/{y}.{ext}

Accessing your Distribution from a web map should verify that tiles are cached on second request. Tile headers should include:

x-cache: Hit from cloudfront

x-cache: Hit from cloudfront

You may next want to assign a custom domain name to your distribution through Route 53 and Certificate Manager and update the public hostname in step 4 above.

Monitoring ​

• CloudFront will transmit metrics to the CloudWatch us-east-1 region.
• Lambda will transmit metrics to the region matching the Lambda function.

Recommended Metrics ​

• Cache Hit Rate: All Metrics > Cloudfront > Per-Distribution Metrics > Requests

• Lambda Invocations: All Metrics > Lambda > By Function Name > Invocations

• Lambda Execution Time: All Metrics > Lambda > By Funcion Name > Duration

Cleanup ​

Deleting the CloudFormation stack will delete the CloudFront distribution, Lambda function and all associated resources, but leave the bucket untouched.

Cache Invalidation ​

• For AWS Cloudfront, issue prefix-based invalidations at the Cloudfront Console. The first 1000 invalidations per month are free (a prefix = 1 invalidation).
• A cache purge will result in new billable events in Lambda and reads from the origin S3 object.

Lambda Configuration ​

The raw Lambda function embedded in the CloudFormation template is also available at lambda_function.zip. Note that this must be uploaded as a .zip file containing the single file index.js.

Lambda environment variables:

• BUCKET: the S3 bucket name.
• PMTILES_PATH: optional, define how a tileset name is translated into an S3 key. Default {name}.pmtiles
  • Example path setting for objects in a directory: my_folder/{name}/file.pmtiles
• CORS: optional, set the value of the Access-Control-Allow-Origin response header. Examples: https://example.com, *. Only supports one origin, so useful for development or staging environments only. For production use you should use CloudFront CORS configuration.
• CACHE_MAX_AGE: max age in the CloudFront cache, in seconds. default 86400, or 1 day.
• CACHE_CONTROL: HTTP header value to control caching, default public, max-age=86400 (1 day).