This tutorial is heavily based on Rupert’s article here. However, the steps in this article are very different on some points. There are some steps that I had to figure out using other sources.

Generating OpenStreetMap tiles database

We’re going to use downloadosmtiles.pl to download OSM tiles for a specific region.

1. Download, compile, and install GEO-OSM-Tiles 0.04. In Terminal:

   wget http://search.cpan.org/CPAN/authors/id/R/RO/ROTKRAUT/Geo-OSM-Tiles-0.04.tar.gz
   tar -xf Geo-OSM-Tiles-0.04.tar.gz
   cd Geo-OSM-Tiles-0.04
   
   perl Makefile.PL # make sure there are no errors/warnings
   make
   make test
   make install # you might have to use sudo
   

   If you get errors like this on Makefile.PL: “Warning: prerequisite YAML 0 not found.“, install the missing Perl libraries first before continuing.

2. Determine the region you want to download. You can use OSM: go to http://openstreetmap.org and select Export from the top menu. You should be able to see 4 fields specifying the selected region coordinates. Click on Manually select a different area to define your own region.

   

3. Execute downloadosmtiles.pl with the coordinates and your desired zoom levels to download the tiles:

   downloadosmtiles.pl --lat=0.871:1.79 --long=103.342:104.3 --zoom=0:15 --destdir=/your/tiles/folder
   

   When specifying values for lat and long, enter the lowest value first. Call downloadosmtiles.pl help to see more options.

   The destination folder should now contain image files organized like this:

   

4. Download and run map2sqlite to convert the tile set to a sqlite database. You can download the source here and compile it in XCode. Or you can download the compiled binary here. We’ll use the compiled binary in this example.

   wget http://shikii.net/blog/downloads/map2sqlite-bin.zip
   tar -xf map2sqlite-bin.zip
   
   ./map2sqlite -db /your/mymap.sqlite -mapdir /your/tiles/folder
   

Using the offline map in Route-Me

For a quick example, we’ll use a sample project included in route-me.

1. Download and extract the latest route-me library from GitHub: https://github.com/route-me/route-me
2. Open the sample project at samples/SimpleMap/SimpleMap.xcodeproj. Select the SimpleMap scheme and test to make sure it runs before we do anything to it.

3. Add the map database you just created to the project’s resources. Make sure that it is also added to the Copy Bundle Resources.

   

4. In MapViewViewController.m, add an import for RMDBMapSource.h.

5. Add this to the bottom of -viewDidLoad of MapViewViewController.m:

   // Use the bundled database as our map source
   RMDBMapSource *mapSrc = [[[RMDBMapSource alloc] initWithPath:@"mymap.sqlite"] autorelease];
   [[[RMMapContents alloc] initWithView:mapView tilesource:mapSrc] autorelease];
   
   // Constrain our map so the user can only browse through our exported map tiles
   [mapView setConstraintsSW:CLLocationCoordinate2DMake(mapSrc.bottomRightOfCoverage.latitude, mapSrc.topLeftOfCoverage.longitude)
                          NE:CLLocationCoordinate2DMake(mapSrc.topLeftOfCoverage.latitude, mapSrc.bottomRightOfCoverage.longitude)];
   // Move to the center of our exported map
   [mapView moveToLatLong:mapSrc.centerOfCoverage];
   

   The first 2 lines instruct the map view (RMMapView) to use the offline map as the map source. The -setConstraintsSW:NE call is not necessary but I think it’s a good idea to only show the map region that we have exported. The user will see empty gray spaces for regions that we don’t have map tiles for without the constraints.

And we’re done!

39 Responses to Offline maps in iOS using OpenStreetMap and Route-Me

hamdan April 25, 2012 at 5:35 pm

i’v got this warning,“Warning: prerequisite YAML 0 not found.“ how do we add other perl libraries?can u please refer me to a link or something?

Shiki April 26, 2012 at 6:15 am

@hamdan, sorry, my knowledge in Perl is very limited. I’m using MacPorts, so I was able to install YAML quite easily through that.

hamdan April 27, 2012 at 2:16 pm

@shiki,thanks at lot for the tutorial,it worked pretty well,but im not able to see grey spaces for regions that we don’t have map tiles. i’m jus not allowed to scroll to those areas…?plz do let me know if u have any idea…

Shiki April 27, 2012 at 2:44 pm

@hamdan, if you’d look at the Step 5 in the “Using the offline map in Route-Me” section, the code in there constrains the map to just the part where you have tiles. You can remove that code so you’ll see gray spaces.

Dasoman April 27, 2012 at 3:55 pm

Ok, never mind, I was setting the coordinates backwards.

Dasoman April 27, 2012 at 3:56 pm

Sorry, the other comment I wrote (about not being able to download the tiles) didn’t show. Please ignore these two messages (and thanks for the tutorial!).

hamdan April 27, 2012 at 4:44 pm

thanks a lot Shiki.

hamdan April 30, 2012 at 12:43 pm

hello shiki,can we do forward and backward geocoding on openstreetmap?i mean offline…if possible can u guide me to a good tutorial or ideas please?

Shiki April 30, 2012 at 3:10 pm

@hamdan Sorry, I have no experience with that.

Mirko June 20, 2012 at 6:02 am

Hi Shiki,

thanks for the excellent tutorial. The source of map2sqlite is not available at github anymore. Any ideas where to get it?

Bach June 20, 2012 at 11:28 am

Thanks for the detailed tutorial. I’m getting this error though: … Can’t locate Geo/OSM/Tiles.pm … BEGIN failed–compilation aborted at ./downloadosmtiles.pl line 6. …

any ideas why this might be happening?

Shiki June 21, 2012 at 10:42 am

@Mirko, Please try this one: https://github.com/Label305/iOS-OfflineMaps-Example

Shiki June 21, 2012 at 10:43 am

@Bach In what step does that happen?

JulienT July 3, 2012 at 4:03 am

Hi,

I have to congratulate the author for this great tutorial. I have however a small problem : I’m trying to use map2sqlite on Ubuntu (12.04) but when I execute

./map2sqlite -db /your/mymap.sqlite -mapdir /your/tiles/folder

an error occurs. I replaced the files destination with mine. The error in the terminal shows strange characters.

If anyone can help me it would be nice.

Thanks.

Signar July 4, 2012 at 5:47 pm

@Bach I had the same problem and made it work by copying downloadosmtiles.pl into the lib directory and running it from there.

louis de decker July 12, 2012 at 5:38 pm

Hello Shiki the link to the source code of map2sqlite is down (https://github.com/InfiniteDroplets/iOS-OfflineMaps-Example/downloads) Is it available elsewhere ? thanks! Louis

Shiki July 13, 2012 at 6:27 pm

@louis, please try this one https://github.com/Label305/iOS-OfflineMaps-Example

MobileAppVault August 10, 2012 at 3:54 pm

Hello, I think this is a similar project and more up to date! https://github.com/mapbox/mapbox-ios-sdk

Frank Schröder August 17, 2012 at 6:58 am

I am the original author of the map2sqlite tool and I am happy to see that it is still of good use. I will upload the source to github next week so that it is available again.

Frank

Frank Schröder August 17, 2012 at 7:07 am

Just pushed the source of map2sqlite-1.0 to github

https://github.com/magiconair/map2sqlite

Have fun Frank

Bill August 28, 2012 at 11:52 am

I would like to thank you for this article. Sadly can’t get past “Warning: prerequisite YAML 0 not found.“ . When trying to install YAML with ‘perl -MCPAN -e ‘install +YAML’ i get: ‘YAML is up to date (0.84). Anyone nows what I miss? Struggling for two days now…

Alex September 13, 2012 at 6:07 pm

You’re the man! I was using 6 month old generated tile databases and apparently they changed the structure of how route-me queries them. Following your tutorial made me understand my mistake. Love your neat style.

Thank you.

Raeds October 23, 2012 at 2:23 am

@Signar I had the same problem, can you tell me where are you copying the downloadosmtiles.pl ? (folder? way?) thanks a lot.

Manju October 30, 2012 at 10:16 pm

Hi Shiko, Excellent tutorial. Any idea on how I can limit the zoom levels (min and max) ??

hxming2919 December 5, 2012 at 5:28 pm

hi, can u give this example to me? i done it follow you, but it can’t display my map data.

Thanks my email: 329287241@qq.com

Tomas December 5, 2012 at 9:52 pm

All this terminal/Perl bullshit is way too hard for a simple beginning developer. I just can’t get it to work. I don’t understand a thing about Terminal, always giving me errors and whatnot, so frustrating.

Isn’t there a simpler way to achieve this, without Perl or terminal?

Shiki December 10, 2012 at 9:32 pm

@Tomas sorry man. This is the only way I know.

hugh December 11, 2012 at 7:04 pm

Great tutorial. Helped loads. Only thing I would add is that instead of wget I had to use ‘curl -o’.

Dirk December 28, 2012 at 4:20 am

Great tutorial, works like a charme. The hardest part was to install the YAML module without knowing perl. Thanks!!!

kim January 13, 2013 at 9:39 am

404 Not Found at downloadosmtiles.pl line 227. 408 Request Time-out at downloadosmtiles.pl line 227.

kim January 16, 2013 at 11:32 am

*** WebKit discarded an uncaught exception in the webView:decidePolicyForNavigationAction:request:frame:decisionListener: delegate: Graphics & memory are overly taxed if [contents minZoom] is more than 1.5 smaller than [tileSource minZoom]

Wojtek February 21, 2013 at 7:23 pm

You can use this tool to download tiles: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/JTileDownloader it’s easy to use

Lee Chuck March 7, 2013 at 8:17 am

Can some one post code on how to place a marker on current gsp location on the code snipped above?

sanjay April 11, 2013 at 8:02 pm

Can we add annotation on offline map?

masbog May 5, 2013 at 11:08 pm

how to fix Makefile.PL: “Warning: prerequisite YAML 0 not found.“

masbogs-MacBook-Pro:$ sudo cpan password: ***** cpan[1]> install Geo::OSM::Tiles

:)

Ali May 18, 2013 at 3:37 am

THank you for a very good tutorial. i have done all successfully and happy to see my map in simulator. if you can help me with next step… that is routing, i meen how to show the rout on my loaded map between two point.

i have searched but so far could not find anything useful.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OsmSharp/Tutorials/Routing

but i could not get the osmsharp for native IOS.

so i you have anything to guide, i will fall in love with you :)

cheers. Ali

Misha May 20, 2013 at 11:22 pm

I wonder why the author used perl ? ZX Spectrum Basic is much older and the procedure to run would be more interesting than f**king with installing perl…