To create maps from tiles, maptiles downloads, composes and displays tiles from a large number of providers (e.g. OpenStreetMap, Stadia, Esri, CARTO, or Thunderforest).

You can install the released version of maptiles from CRAN with:

install.packages("maptiles")

Alternatively, you can install the development version of osrm (the dev branch) from r-universe with:

install.packages('maptiles', repos = 'https://riatelab.r-universe.dev')

This is a basic example which shows you how to dowload and display OpenStreetMap tiles over North Carolina:

library(sf) #> Linking to GEOS 3.13.1, GDAL 3.10.3, PROJ 9.6.0; sf_use_s2() is TRUE library(maptiles) # import North Carolina counties nc_raw <- st_read(system.file("shape/nc.shp", package = "sf"), quiet = TRUE) # Project to EPSG:3857 nc <- st_transform(nc_raw, "EPSG:3857") # dowload tiles and compose raster (SpatRaster) nc_osm <- get_tiles(nc, crop = TRUE) # display map plot_tiles(nc_osm) # add Norh Carolina counties plot(st_geometry(nc), col = NA, add = TRUE) # add credit mtext(text = get_credit("OpenStreetMap"), side = 1, line = -1, adj = .99)

maptiles gives access to a lot of tiles servers, but it is possible to add others. The following example demonstrates the setting of a map tiles server and how to cache the original tiles for future use:

# define the tile server parameters osmpos <- create_provider( name = "CARTO.POSITRON", url = "https://{s}.basemaps.cartocdn.com/light_all/{z}/{x}/{y}{r}.png", sub = c("a", "b", "c", "d"), citation = "© OpenStreetMap contributors © CARTO " ) # dowload tiles and compose raster (SpatRaster) nc_osmpos <- get_tiles( x = nc, provider = osmpos, crop = TRUE, cachedir = tempdir(), verbose = TRUE, retina = TRUE ) #> Zoom: 7 #> Source(s): © OpenStreetMap contributors © CARTO  #> Cache directory: /tmp/Rtmp1Uv7sr/CARTO.POSITRON #> 8 tiles #> The resulting raster uses high resolution tiles. # display map plot_tiles(nc_osmpos) # display credits mtext(text = get_credit(osmpos), side = 1, line = -1, adj = .99)

The following figure shows mini maps for most of the tiles providers available:

Original tiles use a projection known as “Web Mercator”, “WGS84 / Pseudo Mercator”, “Google Mercator”, “EPSG:3857” or “EPSG:900913”. In most cases get_tiles() uses the projection of its x argument to reproject the tiles. If you wish to avoid any deformation induced by the reprojection process, use “EPSG:3857” for x projection.

All maps available through maptiles are offered freely by various providers. The only counterpart from the user is to properly display an attribution text on the maps. get_credit() displays a short attribution text to add on each map using the downloaded tiles.

There are many alternative packages that pursue the same objective as maptiles. Some focus on a specific map tiles provider (e.g. Mapbox, Google, OpenStreetMap) or on a specific graphics device (ggplot2). The goal of maptiles is to be flexible enough to allow the use of different providers and to have a minimal number of robust and modern dependencies. However, depending on the use case, one of following packages may better suit your needs:

• ceramic
• ggmap (ggplot2 focused)
• ggspatial (ggplot2 focused, based on rosm)
• mapboxapi (mapbox)
• mapsapi (google, based on RgoogleMaps)
• OpenStreetMap (requires Java)
• RgoogleMaps (google)
• rosm
• …

Not to be confused with tilemaps, that “implements an algorithm for generating maps, known as tile maps, in which each region is represented by a single tile of the same shape and size.”