Howto install MapRender

1) Download and installation of MapRender

You can download the MapRender package from the download page.

The MapRender package comes as a .zip file for either Windows or Linux so please select the fitting file and download it to your server and unzip it into the directory of your choice.

The resulting folder structure contains the file maprender.bat (Windows) or maprender.sh (Linux) which can be used to trigger the rendering process.

2) First steps with the Demo-project

The downloaded Zip-file contains a demo project which will render the map tiles for Karlsruhe in zoom level 12. For this demo all the required data is already bundled in the Zip-file.

So for the very first step with MapRender you don’t have any other prerequisites and you can directly jump to the page explaining Howto run the demo project.

If you want to render a real map it will sadly be a little bit more complicated. See the next paragraph.

3) Prerequisites

To use MapRender for your own project you need to have a few things prepared. Mainly the datasource containing the data that should be rendered.

• Database: MapRender uses the standard OSM PostgreSQL installation to render OSM data. Therefor you need a running Postgresql database with installed PostGIS plugin containing the Openstreetmap tables and data. For information on how to set up this database you can refer to the official Openstreetmap wiki. A starting point could be the OSM PostgreSQL site. Sadly this step is rather complicated and requires some knowledge in Linux and Database administration.
• Data: As soon as you have the database up and running you can start to fill that database with the OSM data. Most likely you want to start with a small dataset like a city. Bigger areas are rather large and require a lot of time to import and render. So as long as you are still in the learning phase it is normally better to keep the datasets small.
  Importing the data into the database can be done by downloading the data as .PBF file (ProtocollBuffer) and import it into the database with the Osm2Pgsql tool.
  A good place to get a small dataset is the BBBike site.