[OSM-talk] Compression on Overpass API

Adrian ar2988-os2 at yahoo.co.uk
Tue Nov 1 21:30:18 UTC 2016


I read in a recent weeklyOSM about prototype software for downloading OSM data in PBF format from Overpass. This has prompted me to pass on a tip which may not be widely known: It is possible to obtain about 10:1 compression now on any OAPI or XAPI query by using HTTP compression. This is supported on the German and French instances but not on the Russian instance. I use 'curl --compressed' at the command line to invoke HTTP compression, e.g. (for an area of central London)
XAPI query
curl --compressed -g -o data.osm https://overpass-api.de/api/xapi_meta?*[bbox=-0.15,51.49,-0.1,51.52]
Equivalent OAPI query
curl --compressed -g -o data.osm 'https://overpass-api.de/api/interpreter?data=(node(51.49,-0.15,51.52,-0.1);%20<;node(w););out%20meta;'
This can greatly speed up the downloading of large datasets.



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