Map Tile

Service version: 1
Last edit: 2023.08.01

Purpose

The Maps Raster Tile API endpoint renders map data that is divided into gridded sections called tiles. Tiles are square images in various sizes which are available at 23 different zoom levels, ranging from 0 to 22. For zoom level 0, the entire earth is displayed on one single tile, while at zoom level 22, the world is divided into 244 tiles. See the Zoom Levels and Tile Grid.

Run this endpoint

You can easily run this and other endpoints. Go to the TomTom API Explorer page and follow the directions.

Tile layers and styles

The Maps Raster service supports the following tile layers: basic, hybrid, and labels. Each can be served in two different styles: main and night.

Basic tiles contain mapping data such as polygons, road shapes, borders and labels. In addition to the basic map tiles, the service provides overlay tiles. These are partially transparent tiles containing map geometry or labels but not the full map. They can be layered with other TomTom or third party map tiles to create consolidated views:

  • The labels overlay provides the same label information as the standard map tile. It can be used in situations where traffic tubes or other overlaid information covers the labels on the base map layer. The labels are precisely placed to align with the labels on the standard layer.
  • The hybrid overlay provides all the features from the map data except geographic polygons. It contains borders, roads, and labels, and can be overlaid on other tiles (such as satellite imagery) to produce hybrid tiles displaying TomTom map data.

Because overlaying requires transparency, all overlay tiles must be requested with a format of png.

Tile Sizes

The following tiles sizes are currently supported:

  • 256 x 256 pixels: This is better suited for lower resolution displays and clients sensitive to internet data transfer usage.
  • 512 x 512 pixels: This is created for displays with high resolutions.

Request data

HTTPS method: GET

  • Constants and parameters enclosed in curly brackets { } must be replaced with their values.
  • Please see the following Request parameters section with the required and optional parameters tables for their values. The generic request format is as follows.

URL format

get
Request URL
https://{baseURL}/map/{versionNumber}/tile/{layer}/{style}/{zoom}/{X}/{Y}.{format}?key={Your_API_Key}&tileSize={tileSize}&view={geopoliticalView}&language={language}

curl command format

get
Request curl command
curl 'https://{baseURL}/map/{versionNumber}/tile/{layer}/{style}/{zoom}/{X}/{Y}.{format}?key={Your_API_Key}&tileSize={tileSize}&view={geopoliticalView}&language={language}'

Request parameters

These parameters are used in calls to generate all tile layers.

  • Required parameters must be used or the call will fail.
  • Parameters and values are case-sensitive.
  • Optional parameters may be used.

Required parameters

Description

baseURL


string

The base URL for calling TomTom services.


Values:

versionNumber


string

The version of the service to call.


Value: The current version is 1.

layer


string

Layer of the tile to be rendered.


Values:

  • basic

  • hybrid

  • labels

style


string

Style of the tile to be rendered.


Values:

  • main

  • night

zoom


integer

Zoom level of the tile to be rendered.


Value: 0..22

X


integer

The x coordinate of the tile on a zoom grid.


Value: 0..2 zoom -1

Y


integer

The y coordinate of the tile on a zoom grid.


Value: 0..2 zoom -1

format


string

The format of the response.


Values:

  • jpg

  • png


Note: The jpg format is only supported for layer=basic , style=main , and zoom<7.

key


string

An API Key valid for the requested service.


Value: Your valid API Key.

Optional parameters

Description

tileSize


integer

The tile size dimension in pixels.


Default value: 256


Other value: 512


view


string

A geopolitical view. Usage of a value outside of the given set will result in the server sending a HTTP 400 response.


Default value: See the following Default view mapping section.


Other values:

  • Unified

  • IL

  • IN

  • MA

  • PK

  • AR

  • Arabic

  • RU

  • TR

  • CN

  • KR *


* Only available under kr-api.tomtom.com , see Available region specific contents.

language


string

The language to be used for labels returned in the response. It should be one of the supported IETF language code tags described here or one of the custom language tags. When data in a specified language is not available for a specific label, the default language is used.


Default value: NGT (Neutral Ground Truth)


Other values: See the following List of supported languages.

Request headers

The following table lists HTTP request headers of particular interest to clients of the Maps Raster Tile API endpoint.

Optional headers

Description

Accept-Encoding

Contains the content encoding (usually a compression algorithm), that the client is able to understand.


Value: gzip

If-None-Match

Contains an identifier for a specific version of resource. The server will send back the requested resource, with a 200 HTTP status code, only if it doesn't have an ETag matching the given one.


Value: <string>

Tracking-ID

Specifies an identifier for the request. It can be used to trace a call. The value must match the regular expression '^[a-zA-Z0-9-]{1,100}$'. An example of the format that matches this regular expression is a UUID (e.g., 9ac68072-c7a4-11e8-a8d5-f2801f1b9fd1 ). For details check RFC 4122. If specified, it is replicated in the Tracking-ID response header.


Value: <string>

Default language algorithm

The best match will be chosen based on following algorithm.

  1. Every IETF language subtag provided in the language parameter is being matched from left to right. A partial match is allowed. For example:
    • All requested language subtags exactly match when the requested language is selected.
    • If the requested primary language subtag does not have a match for a region , but a script subtag is available for other primary language subtags, then this other laguage will be used.
  2. If there are multiple matches for a region, then the one with the highest priority is used.
  3. If there is no match then NGT (Neutral Ground Truth) is used.

List of supported languages

Language name

Language tag

Neutral Ground Truth (custom)

NGT


Official languages for all regions in local scripts if available.

Neutral Ground Truth - Latin exonyms (custom)

NGT-Latn


Latin script will be used if available.

Arabic

ar

Bulgarian

bg-BG

Chinese (Taiwan)

zh-TW

Chinese (Simplified)

zh-CN

Czech

cs-CZ

Danish

da-DK

Dutch

nl-NL

English (Australia)

en-AU

English (Canada)

en-CA

English (Great Britain)

en-GB

English (New Zealand)

en-NZ

English (USA)

en-US

Finnish

fi-FI

French

fr-FR

German

de-DE

Greek

el-GR

Hungarian

hu-HU

Indonesian

id-ID

Italian

it-IT

Korean

ko-KR

Lithuanian

lt-LT

Malay

ms-MY

Norwegian

nb-NO

Polish

pl-PL

Portuguese (Brazil)

pt-BR

Portuguese (Portugal)

pt-PT

Russian written in the Cyrillic script.

ru-RU

Russian written in the Latin script.

ru-Latn-RU

Russian written in the Cyrillic script.


Cyrillic script used where possible.

ru-Cyrl-RU

Slovak

sk-SK

Slovenian

sl-SI

Spanish (Castilian)

es-ES

Spanish (Mexico)

es-MX

Swedish

sv-SE

Thai

th-TH

Turkish

tr-TR

Default view mapping

Default view is recognised based on the country the request came from.

Country

Default view

Argentina

AR


Other available views: Arabic , CN , IN , IL , KR *, MA , PK , RU , TR , Unified

India

IN


Other available views: None

Morocco

MA


Other available views: Arabic , AR , CN , IN , IL , KR *, PK , RU , TR , Unified

Pakistan

PK


Other available views: Arabic , AR , CN , IN , IL , KR *, MA , RU , TR , Unified

Russia

RU


Other available views: Arabic , AR , CN , IN , IL , KR *, MA , PK , TR , Unified

Türkiye

TR


Other available views: Arabic , AR , CN , IN , IL , KR *, MA , PK , RU , Unified

China

CN


Other available views: Arabic , AR , IN , IL , KR *, MA , PK , RU , TR , Unified

Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar,


Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates

Arabic


Other available views: AR , CN , IN , IL , KR *, MA , PK , RU , TR , Unified

Others

Unified


Other available views: Arabic , AR , CN , IN , IL , KR *, MA , PK , RU , TR


Host Name Cycling

Most web browsers have a default limitation on the number of active connections that can be allowed to each host. This means if map tiles are being loaded via the api.tomtom.com host name, they will be loaded one at a time. A trick that can be used to get around this limitation is to cycle through the hosts we have created as aliases. These host names are:

  • a.api.tomtom.com
  • b.api.tomtom.com
  • c.api.tomtom.com
  • d.api.tomtom.com

By cycling through these four different host names, the web browser will be tricked into retrieving four map tiles at a time rather than just one. This will significantly speed up the performance of map rendering.

For instance, if four map tiles are being requested at zoom level one, you would request the first one as:

get
Request URL using a.api.tomtom.com
https://a.api.tomtom.com/map/1/tile/basic/main/1/0/0.png?key={Your_API_Key}

The second would be:

get
Request URL using b.api.tomtom.com
https://b.api.tomtom.com/map/1/tile/basic/main/1/0/0.png?key={Your_API_Key}

and so on up until d.api.tomtom.com. When more than four tiles are being requested, start back again at a.api.tomtom.com.

Response data

The Maps Raster API, for a single request, returns one square tile in png or jpg format.

256 x 256 pixels

Layer

Main

Night

basicbasic main viewbasic night view
hybridhybrid main viewhybrid night view
labelslabels main viewlabels night view

512 x 512 pixels

Layer

Main

basicbasic main 512
labelslabels main 512

Response examples

Example 1

**Whole world at zoom = 0 **

Request

Response

Basic main zoom = 0:


https://api.tomtom.com/map/1/tile/basic/main/0/0/0.png?key={Your_API_Key}

basic main zoom 0

Basic night zoom = 0:


https://api.tomtom.com/map/1/tile/basic/night/0/0/0.png?key={Your_API_Key}

basic night zoom 0

Note: There is no data for labels and roads at this zoom level, so any different combination of layer and style will cause a transparent tile to be returned.


Example 2

**Europe at zoom = 4 **

Request

Response

Basic main zoom = 4:


https://api.tomtom.com/map/1/tile/basic/main/4/8/5.png?key={Your_API_Key}

basic main zoom 4

Hybrid main zoom = 4:


https://api.tomtom.com/map/1/tile/hybrid/main/4/8/5.png?key={Your_API_Key}

hybrid main zoom 4

Labels main zoom = 4:


https://api.tomtom.com/map/1/tile/labels/main/4/8/5.png?key={Your_API_Key}

labels main zoom 4

Basic night zoom = 4:


https://api.tomtom.com/map/1/tile/basic/night/4/8/5.png?key={Your_API_Key}

basic night zoom 4

Hybrid night zoom = 4:


https://api.tomtom.com/map/1/tile/hybrid/night/4/8/5.png?key={Your_API_Key}

hybrid night zoom 4

Labels night zoom = 4:


https://api.tomtom.com/map/1/tile/labels/night/4/8/5.png?key={Your_API_Key}

labels night zoom 4

Example 3

**Amsterdam at zoom = 17 **

Request

Response

Basic main zoom = 17:


https://api.tomtom.com/map/1/tile/basic/main/17/67296/43062.png?key={Your_API_Key}

basic main zoom = 17

Hybrid main zoom = 17:


https://api.tomtom.com/map/1/tile/hybrid/main/17/67296/43062.png?key={Your_API_Key}

hybrid main zoom = 17

Labels main zoom = 17:


https://api.tomtom.com/map/1/tile/labels/main/17/67296/43062.png?key={Your_API_Key}

labels main zoom = 17

Basic night zoom = 17:


https://api.tomtom.com/map/1/tile/basic/night/17/67296/43062.png?key={Your_API_Key}

basic night zoom = 17

Hybrid night zoom = 17:


https://api.tomtom.com/map/1/tile/hybrid/night/17/67296/43062.png?key={Your_API_Key}

hybrid night zoom = 17

Labels night zoom = 17:


https://api.tomtom.com/map/1/tile/labels/night/17/67296/43062.png?key={Your_API_Key}

labels night zoom = 17

Error response

The Map Display API Raster service for an invalid request returns a response body in XML or JSON format. The XML format is returned by default. To have an error response returned in JSON format, application/json has to be specified in the Accept HTTP request header.

Error response field structure

Field

Description

detailedError


object

Main object of the error response.

code


string

One of a server-defined set of error codes.

message


string

A human-readable description of the error code.

Error response example

Error response example - JSON
1{
2 "detailedError": {
3 "code": "BAD_REQUEST",
4 "message": "Invalid tile position arguments"
5 }
6}
Error response example - XML
1<errorResponse description="Invalid tile position arguments" errorCode="400" version="1.0.54-mascoma">
2 <code>BAD_REQUEST</code>
3 <message>Invalid tile position arguments</message>
4 </detailedError>
5</errorResponse>

Response codes

Code

Meaning & possible causes

200

OK

304

Not Modified : The tile has not been modified. This code is returned when the If-None-Match request header is used and its value matches the ETag of the requested tile.

400

Bad request : Probably malformed syntax.

  • The combination of layer, style, and query parameters is not supported.

  • Zoom n is out of range 0 <= zoom <= 22: The requested zoom level is out of the possible range.

  • x n is out of range [0, m ]: The requested x coordinate is out of the possible range (the value of m will vary depending on the zoom level).

  • y n is out of range [0, m ]: The requested y coordinate is out of the possible range (the value of m will vary depending on the zoom level).

403

Forbidden : The supplied API Key is not valid for this request. The requested view is not available in the country from where the request was sent.

429

Too Many Requests : Too many requests were sent in a given amount of time for the supplied API Key.

500

Internal Server Error : There is a problem with the TomTom Maps Raster Tile service.

503

Service currently unavailable.

Response headers

The following table lists HTTP response headers of particular interest to clients of the Map Display API Raster Tile endpoint.

Header

Description

Access-Control-Allow-Origin

The Maps Raster Tile API allows cross-origin resource sharing (CORS).


Value: *

Cache-Control

Contains directives for a caching mechanism.


Value: max-age=<decimal number>

Content-Encoding

Indicates which encodings were applied to the Response body.


Value: gzip

Content-Length

Contains information about the size of the response body.


Value: <decimal number>

Content-Type

Indicates the media type of the resource returned.


Values:

  • image/png

  • image/jpeg

Date

Contains the date and time at which the message was originated.


Value: <http-date>

ETag

Contains an identifier for a specific version of resource.


Value: W/"2fdbd61f30456"

Expires

Contains the date after which the response is considered outdated.


Value: http-date

Transfer-Encoding

Specifies the form of encoding used to safely transfer Response to the user. If this header is specified, Content-Length header will be absent.


Value: chunked

Tracking-ID

An identifier for the request. If the Tracking-ID header was specified in the request, it is replicated in the response. Otherwise, it is generated automatically by the service. For details check RFC 4122. Value: <string>