Open Topo Data Server Documentation

Getting started

The easiest way to run Open Topo Data is with Docker. Install docker then run the following commands:

git clone https://github.com/ajnisbet/opentopodata.git
cd opentopodata
make build
make run

This will start a server on localhost:5000 with a small demo dataset called test-dataset. Check out the API docs for info about the format of requests and responses.

Dataset support

Open Topo Data supports all georeferenced raster formats supported by GDAL (e.g, .tiff, .hgt, .jp2).

Datasets can take one of two formats:

  • A single raster file.
  • A collection of square raster tiles which follow the SRTM naming convention: the file is named for the lower left corner. So a file named N30W120.tiff would span from 30 to 31 degrees latitude, and -120 to -119 degrees longitude. By default tiles are 1° by 1° and the coordinates are in WGS84, but this can be configured.

If your dataset consists of multiple files that aren't on a nice grid, you can create a .vrt file pointing to the files that Open Topo Data will treat as a single-file dataset. For an example of this process, see the documentation for configuring EMODnet.

Configuration

Open Topo Data is configured by a config.yaml file. If that file is missing it will look for example-config.yaml instead.

A config might look like:

max_locations_per_request: 100 
access_control_allow_origin: '*'
datasets:
- name: etopo1
  path: data/etopo1/
- name: srtm90m
  path: data/srtm-90m-v3/
  filename_epsg: 4326
  filename_tile_size: 1

corresponding to a directory structure:

opentopodata
|
└───data
    |
    ├───etopo1
    |   |
    |   └───etopo1-dem.geotiff
    |
    └───srtm-90m-v3
        |
        ├───N00E000.hgt 
        ├───N00E001.hgt 
        ├───N00E002.hgt 
        ├───etc...

which would expose localhost:5000/v1/etopo1 and localhost:5000/v1/srtm90m.

Config spec

  • max_locations_per_request: Requests with more than this many locations will return a 400 error. Default: 100.
  • access_control_allow_origin: Value for the Access-Control-Allow-Origin CORS header. Set to * or a domain to allow in-browser requests from a different origin. Set to null to send no Access-Control-Allow-Origin header. Default: null.
  • datasets[].name: Dataset name, used in url. Required.
  • datasets[].path: Path to folder containing the dataset. If the dataset is a single file it must be placed inside a folder. This path is relative to the repository directory inside docker. I suggest placing datasets inside the provided data folder, which is mounted in docker by make run. Files can be nested arbitrarily inside the dataset path. Required.
  • datasets[].filename_epsg: For tiled datasets, the projection of the filename coordinates. The default value is 4326, which is latitude/longitude with the WGS84 datum.
  • datasets[].filename_tile_size: For tiled datasets, how large each square tile is, in the units of filename_epsg. For example, a lat,lon location of 38.2,121.2 would lie in the tile N38W121 for a tile size of 1, but lie in N35W120 for a tile size of 5. Default: 1.

Adding datasets

An important goal of Open Topo Data is make is easy to add new datasets. The included dataset is very low resolution (about 100km) and is intended only for testing.

Adding a new dataset takes two steps:

  1. placing the dataset in the data directory
  2. adding the path to the dataset in config.yaml.

Instructions are provided for adding the various datasets used in the public API:

Windows support

Unfortunately I don't have access to a Windows machine, to can't promise support on Windows. Some users have had issues getting the docker image to run: if this happens to you, it should be possible to run Open Topo Data outside of docker, provided all the dependencies in requirements.txt and Dockerfile are installed.