Introduction • tmap.mapgl

Recall that tmap offers two modes: "plot" for static mapping and "view" for interactive mapping. See introduction. The "view" mode uses the JavaScript library Leaflet as backend.

The extension package tmap.mapgl offers two new modes which are also interactive: "mapbox" and "maplibre" which use the JavaScript libraries Mapbox GL and Maplibre GL respectively. An API key is required to use "mapbox" (free for personal use), but "maplibre" is (as the name suggests) free for any use.

Note that tmap.mapgl is a bridge between the R packages mapgl and tmap. It makes the functionality of mapgl (making the JavaScript libraries available to R) also available via the tmap user interface.

Installation

See intructions

Switching modes

Get the current mode

tmap_mode()
#> ℹ tmap modes "plot" -> "view" -> "mapbox" -> "maplibre"
#> ℹ rotate with `tmap::rtm()`switch to "plot" with `tmap::ttm()`

Switch to mapbox

tmap_mode("mapbox")
#> ℹ tmap modes "plot" -> "view" ->
#> "mapbox" -> "maplibre"

Alternatively, rtm() can be used to rotate between modes:

rtm()
#> ℹ tmap modes "plot" -> "view" ->
#> "mapbox" -> "maplibre"

Now we are in maplibre mode:

Making the map

The syntax to create the map is exactly the same as for the other tmap modes:

tm_shape(World) + 
  tm_polygons("well_being",
    fill.scale = tm_scale_continuous(values = "pu_gn"))