Setting up TileStache

Question

I want to set up TileStache, but I'm new enough to the world of GIS to find the TileStache docs a bit impenetrable.

I've just about figured out that I need to run

tilestache-server.py -c tilestache.cfg 

to start TileStache, and navigate to http://127.0.0.1:8080/ to see the results.

However, I'm unclear on what to put in tilestache.cfg.

Eventually I want to use GeoJSON, generated from a PostGIS database, but for now I'd just like to start with a simple example to make sure that TileStache is working.

There is a 'minimal sample configuration' in the docs, but it seems to rely on Mapnik - and refers to a style.xml file - do I need to install and configure Mapnik before I can use TileStache?

* UPDATE *

Okay, I've tried using a 'proxy' config as follows in tilestache.cfg:

{
  "cache":  {"name": "Test"},
  "layers":
  {
    "roads":
    {
      "provider":
      {
        "name": "proxy", 
        "url": "http://tile.openstreetmap.org/{Z}/{X}/{Y}.png"
      }
    }
  }
}

And then restarting Tilestache and going to http://127.0.0.1:8080/, but I still see:

Bad path: "/". I was expecting something more like "/example/0/0/0.png"

If I go to http://127.0.0.1:8080/example/0/0/0.png then I get a 404 - any ideas?

* UPDATE 2 *

For the benefit of others: roads should be part of the URL, so visit http://127.0.0.1:8080/roads/0/0/0.png or http://127.0.0.1:8080/roads/preview.html to see tiles!

Answer 1

From browsing the documentation, it looks like Mapnik is just one of the possible providers. For your simple test, you could try the Proxy provider example (in the Providers section) which pulls and caches tiles from OpenStreetMap.

For your final goal, it looks like you'll want to use the Vector provider with your GeoJSON data.