[OSM-Talk-ZA] Using Openstreetmaps on a website.

[Grant Slater]

Dave Coventry wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm interested in getting a functioning representation of the South
> African Openstreetmaps on my web page.
>   

Brilliant!
Yes there are a number of ways of doing it... in increasing complexity

Option 1) www.openstreetmap.org, zoom to correct area, click export tab, 
choose Embeddable HTML from Format to Export and add Output html to your 
site.
Option 2) Setup openlayers "slippymap" on your site using the 
openstreetmap.org default mapnik tiles. Guides: here 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenLayers
Option 3) Setup your own custom rendering tiles using Mapnik. (using 
postgresql postgis db) Guide: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mapnik
Likely loads of others...

Note on 1: Commercial OSM guys exist like www.cloudmade.com which offer 
other more advanced HTML embedding options.
Note on 2: Openlayers is very powerful, even supports vector layers, 
tiles could be proxy cached (squid) in SA. Bulk downloading of tiles not 
recommended.
Note on 3: osm2pgsql, on demand tile rendering can be done with apache 
mod_tile. Weekly extracts of the OSM planet export are available here: 
http://download.cloudmade.com/africa/south_africa

> Is there somewhere I can get guidelines on how to do this?
>
> I am thinking in terms of using perl scripts to pick up the content
> (in either vector or as bitmap) and displaying it on my site.
>   
Stitching tiles is an option else the image export function on 
www.openstreetmap.org code might be a good starting point: 
http://svn.openstreetmap.org/sites/tile.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/export

> Or would a better way be to mirror the database onto my site and use
> that? Are there tools for doing this? Is anyone currently doing this?
>   

See above, it really comes down to what you want to implement.
See http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/List_of_OSM_based_Services for 
inspiration, some have code.

Regards,
 Grant