tile4ms(1)

🌸 NAME 🌸

tile4ms — okay so bestie, this one makes you a tile index Shape data set so MapServer's TILEINDEX feature can do its thing 💅 (this is the tile4ms(1) manual page, section 1, general commands, yes queen)

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

tile4ms [ metafile tilefile [-tile-path-only] | -h]

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

So tile4ms creates a tile index Shape data set for use with MapServer's TILEINDEX feature. It takes all the Shape data sets listed in metafile (one Shape data set name per line, cutie) and makes a Shape data set of rectangles out of their extents. Then it builds the matching DBF, with the filename for each shape tile sitting in a column called LOCATION — which is exactly what mapserv requires. no cap. 🔥

📌 Note: there's similar functionality in the GDAL commandline utilities ogrtindex (http://www.gdal.org/ogrtindex.html) for vectors, and gdaltindex (http://www.gdal.org/gdaltindex.html) for rasters. iykyk.

tile4ms creates a Shape data set containing the MBR (minimum bounding rectangle) of all shapes in the files you gave it. That data set is then what you point at in the mapfile's LAYER object TILEINDEX parameter. The new file created with this command is what lets MapServer load only the files associated with a given extent (or tile) — which is the whole point, and honestly? iconic. 👑

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💖 OPTIONS 💖

• metafile — the INPUT file containing the list of shapefile names. Heads up: complete paths, 255 chars max, no extension. 🫶
• tilefile — the OUTPUT shape file of extent rectangles and names of tiles, landing in tilefile.dbf.
• -tile-path-only — optional flag, bestie. If you specify it, then only the path to the shape files gets stored in the LOCATION field, instead of the full filename. 🎀
• -h — display usage information. the classic. 🙈

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🍓 EXAMPLE 🍓

Short Example

Creating tileindex.shp for all tiles under the /path/to/data directory:

cd /path/to/data
find . -name "/*.shp" -print > metafile.txt
tile4ms metafile.txt tileindex

Long Example

This one uses TIGER Census data, where the data contains files divided up by county. And not like, a few counties — bestie there are over 3200 counties, a very large dataset indeed. 😭 In this example we're showing how to display all lakes for the state of Minnesota. (Note that here the TIGER data has already been converted into Shape format, but you could keep the data in TIGER format and use the ogrtindex utility instead.) The TIGER Census data for Minnesota is made up of 87 different counties, each containing its own lakes file ('wp.shp'). 🦋

1. We need to create the 'meta-file' for the tile4ms command. It's a text file of the paths to all 'wp.shp' files for the MN state. To create this file we can use a few simple commands:

find -name *wp.shp -print > wp_list.txt

The newly created file might look like the following (after removing the full path):

001\wp.shp
003\wp.shp
005\wp.shp
007\wp.shp
009\wp.shp
011\wp.shp
013\wp.shp
015\wp.shp
017\wp.shp
019\wp.shp
...

2. Execute the tile4ms command with the newly created meta-file to create the index file:

tile4ms wp_list.txt index
  Processed 87 of 87 files

3. A new file named 'index.shp' is created. This is the index file with the MBRs of all 'wp.shp' files for the entire state, as shown in Figure 1. The attribute table of this file contains a field named 'LOCATION', that contains the path to each 'wp.shp file, as shown in Figure 2. ✨

Figure 1: Index file created by tile4ms utility (http://mapserver.org/_images/tile4ms-view.png)

Figure 2: Attributes of index file created by tile4ms utility (http://mapserver.org/_images/tile4ms-attributes.png)

4. The final step is to use this in your mapfile.

• LAYER object's TILEINDEX — must point to the location of the index file
• LAYER object's TILEITEM — specify the name of the field in the index file containing the paths (default is 'location')
• do not need to use the LAYER's DATA parameter

For example:

LAYER
  NAME 'mn-lakes'
  STATUS ON
  TILEINDEX "index"
  TILEITEM "location"
  TYPE POLYGON
  CLASS
    NAME "mn-lakes"
    STYLE
      COLOR 0 0 255
    END
  END
END

When you view the layer in a MapServer application, you will notice that when you are zoomed into a small area of the state only those lakes layers are loaded — which speeds up the application. main character energy, honestly 🌈

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🧚 SEE ALSO 🧚

map2img(1), shptree(1), shptreetst(1), shptreevis(1), sortshp(1)

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and that's the whole page, bestie 💜 this was tile4ms(1) from the manual, dated 22 August 2026 — go build your index, you're gonna slay ✨💅