kepler.gl | Website | Demo App | Docs

Kepler.gl is a data-agnostic, high-performance web-based application for visual exploration of large-scale geolocation data sets. Built on top of MapLibre GL and deck.gl, kepler.gl can render millions of points representing thousands of trips and perform spatial aggregations on the fly.

Kepler.gl is also a React component that uses Redux to manage its state and data flow. It can be embedded into other React-Redux applications and is highly customizable. For information on how to embed kepler.gl in your app take a look at this step-by-step tutorial on vis.academy.

Links

• Website
• Demo
• Examples
• Get Started
• App User Guide
• Jupyter Widget User Guide
• Tutorial
• Stack Overflow
• Contribution Guidelines
• Api Reference
• Roadmap

Env

Use Node 18.18.2 or above, older node versions have not been supported/ tested. For best results, use nvm nvm install.

Install kepler.gl modules

Kepler.gl consists of different modules. Each module can be added to the project like this:

npm install --save @kepler.gl/components
// or
yarn add @kepler.gl/components

kepler.gl is built upon mapbox. You will need a Mapbox Access Token to use it.

If you don't use a module bundler, it's also fine. Kepler.gl npm package includes precompiled production UMD builds in the umd folder. You can add the script tag to your html file as it follows (latest version of Kepler.gl):

<script src="https://unpkg.com/kepler.gl/umd/keplergl.min.js" />

or if you would like, you can load a specific version:

<script src="https://unpkg.com/kepler.gl@3.0.0/umd/keplergl.min.js" />

Develop kepler.gl

Take a look at the development guide to develop kepler.gl locally.

Basic Usage

Here are the basic steps to import kepler.gl into your app. You also take a look at the examples folder. Each example in the folder can be installed and run locally.

1. Mount reducer

Kepler.gl uses Redux to manage its internal state, along with react-palm middleware to handle side effects.

You need to add taskMiddleware of react-palm to your store too. We are actively working on a solution where react-palm will not be required, however it is still a very lightweight side effects management tool that is easier to test than react-thunk.

import {createStore, combineReducers, applyMiddleware, compose} from 'redux';
import keplerGlReducer from '@kepler.gl/reducers';
import {enhanceReduxMiddleware} from '@kepler.gl/middleware';

const initialState = {};
const reducers = combineReducers({
  // <-- mount kepler.gl reducer in your app
  keplerGl: keplerGlReducer,

  // Your other reducers here
  app: appReducer
});

// using createStore
export default createStore(
  reducer,
  initialState,
  applyMiddleware(
    enhanceReduxMiddleware([
      /* Add other middlewares here */
    ])
  )
);

Or if use enhancer:

// using enhancers
const initialState = {};
const middlewares = enhanceReduxMiddleware([
  // Add other middlewares here
]);
const enhancers = [applyMiddleware(...middlewares)];

export default createStore(reducer, initialState, compose(...enhancers));

If you mount kepler.gl reducer in another address instead of keplerGl, or the kepler.gl reducer is not mounted at root of your state, you will need to specify the path to it when you mount the component with the getState prop.

Read more about Reducers.

2. Mount Component

import KeplerGl from '@kepler.gl/components';

const Map = props => (
  <KeplerGl id="foo" width={width} mapboxApiAccessToken={token} height={height} />
);

Props

Prop Name	Type	Default Value	Description
id	String	map	The unique identifier for the KeplerGl instance. Required when multiple KeplerGl instances exist. It maps to the state in the reducer (e.g. component with id foo can be found instate.keplerGl.foo).
mapboxApiAccessToken	String	undefined	API token for Mapbox, used for rendering base maps. Create a free token at Mapbox.
getState	Function	state => state.keplerGl	Function that specifies the path to the root KeplerGl state in the reducer.
width	Number	800	The width of the KeplerGl UI in pixels.
height	Number	800	The height of the KeplerGl UI in pixels.
appName	String	Kepler.Gl	The app name displayed in the side panel header.
version	String	v1.0	The version displayed in the side panel header.
onSaveMap	Function	undefined	A function called when the "Save Map URL" in side panel header is clicked.
onViewStateChange	Function	undefined	Triggered when the map viewport is updated. Receives viewState parameter with updated values like longitude, latitude, zoom, etc.
getMapboxRef(mapbox, index)	Function	undefined	Called when KeplerGl adds or removes a MapContainer with an inner Mapbox map. mapbox is a MapRef when added, or null when removed. index is 0 for the first map and 1 for the second map in a split view.
actions	Object	{}	Custom action creators to override the default KeplerGl action creators. Only use custom action when you want to modify action payload.
mint	Boolean	true	Determines whether to load a fresh empty state when mounted. When false, the state persists across remounts. Useful for modal use cases.
theme	Object/String	null	Set to "dark", "light", or "base", or pass a theme object to customize KeplerGl’s style.
mapboxApiUrl	String	https://api.mapbox.com	The Mapbox API URL if you are using a custom Mapbox tile server.
mapStylesReplaceDefault	Boolean	false	Set to true to replace default map styles with custom ones. (see mapStyles prop)
mapStyles	Array	[]	An array of custom map styles for the map style selection panel. Styles replace the default ones if mapStylesReplaceDefault is true.
initialUiState	Object	undefined	The initial UI state applied to the uiState reducer.
localeMessages	Object	undefined	Used to modify or add new translations. Read more about Localization.

Example Custom Map Style

You can supply additional map styles to be displayed in map style selection panel. By default, additional map styles will be added to default map styles. If you pass mapStylesReplaceDefault: true, they will replace the default ones. kepler.gl will attempt to group layers of your style based on its id naming convention and use it to allow toggle visibility of base map layers. Supply your own layerGroups to override default for more accurate layer grouping.

Each mapStyles should has the following properties:

• id (String, required) unique string that should not be one of these reserved dark light muted. muted_night
• label (String, required) name to be displayed in map style selection panel
• url (String, required) mapbox style url or a url pointing to the map style json object written in Mapbox GL Style Spec.
• icon (String, optional) image icon of the style, it can be a url, or an image data url
• layerGroups (Array, optional)

const mapStyles = [
  {
    id: 'my_dark_map',
    label: 'Dark Streets 9',
    url: 'mapbox://styles/mapbox/dark-v9',
    icon: `${apiHost}/styles/v1/mapbox/dark-v9/static/-122.3391,37.7922,9.19,0,0/400x300?access_token=${accessToken}&logo=false&attribution=false`,
    layerGroups: [
      {
        slug: 'label',
        filter: ({id}) => id.match(/(?=(label|place-|poi-))/),
        defaultVisibility: true
      },
      {
        slug: '3d building',
        filter: () => false,
        defaultVisibility: false
      }
    ]
  }
];

3. Dispatch custom actions to keplerGl reducer.

One advantage of using the reducer over React component state to handle keplerGl state is the flexibility to customize its behavior. If you only have one KeplerGl instance in your app or never intend to dispatch actions to KeplerGl from outside the component itself, you don’t need to worry about forwarding dispatch and can move on to the next section. But life is full of customizations, and we want to make yours as enjoyable as possible.

There are multiple ways to dispatch actions to a specific KeplerGl instance.

• In the root reducer, with reducer updaters.

Each action is mapped to a reducer updater in kepler.gl. You can import the reducer updater corresponding to a specific action, and call it with the previous state and action payload to get the updated state. e.g. updateVisDataUpdater is the updater for ActionTypes.UPDATE_VIS_DATA (take a look at each reducer reducers/vis-state.js for action to updater mapping). Here is an example how you can listen to an app action QUERY_SUCCESS and call updateVisDataUpdater to load data into Kepler.Gl.

import {keplerGlReducer, visStateUpdaters} from '@kepler.gl/reducers';

// Root Reducer
const reducers = combineReducers({
  keplerGl: keplerGlReducer,

  app: appReducer
});

const composedReducer = (state, action) => {
  switch (action.type) {
    case 'QUERY_SUCCESS':
      return {
        ...state,
        keplerGl: {
          ...state.keplerGl,

          // 'map' is the id of the keplerGl instance
          map: {
            ...state.keplerGl.map,
            visState: visStateUpdaters.updateVisDataUpdater(state.keplerGl.map.visState, {
              datasets: action.payload
            })
          }
        }
      };
  }
  return reducers(state, action);
};

export default composedReducer;

Read more about using updaters to modify kepler.gl state

• Using redux connect

You can add a dispatch function to your component that dispatches actions to a specific keplerGl component, using connect.

// component
import KeplerGl from '@kepler.gl/components';

// action and forward dispatcher
import {toggleFullScreen, forwardTo} from '@kepler.gl/actions';
import {connect} from 'react-redux';

const MapContainer = props => (
  <div>
    <button onClick={() => props.keplerGlDispatch(toggleFullScreen())}/>
    <KeplerGl
      id="foo"
    />
  </div>
)

const mapStateToProps = state => state
const mapDispatchToProps = (dispatch, props) => ({
 dispatch,
 keplerGlDispatch: forwardTo(‘foo’, dispatch)
});

export default connect(
 mapStateToProps,
 mapDispatchToProps
)(MapContainer);

• Wrap action payload

You can also simply wrap an action into a forward action with the wrapTo helper

// component
import KeplerGl from '@kepler.gl/components';

// action and forward dispatcher
import {toggleFullScreen, wrapTo} from '@kepler.gl/actions';

// create a function to wrapper action payload to 'foo'
const wrapToMap = wrapTo('foo');
const MapContainer = ({dispatch}) => (
  <div>
    <button onClick={() => dispatch(wrapToMap(toggleFullScreen())} />
    <KeplerGl
      id="foo"
    />
  </div>
);

Read more about forward dispatching actions

4. Customize style.

Kepler.gl implements css styling using Styled-Components. By using said framework Kepler.gl offers the ability to customize its style/theme using the following approaches:

• Passing a Theme prop
• Styled-Components ThemeProvider

The available properties to customize are listed here theme.

Custom theme example.

Passing a Theme prop.

You can customize Kepler.gl theme by passing a theme props to Kepler.gl react component as it follows:

const white = '#ffffff';
const customTheme = {
  sidePanelBg: white,
  titleTextColor: '#000000',
  sidePanelHeaderBg: '#f7f7F7',
  subtextColorActive: '#2473bd'
};

return (
  <KeplerGl
    mapboxApiAccessToken={MAPBOX_TOKEN}
    id="map"
    width={800}
    height={800}
    theme={customTheme}
  />
);

As you can see the customTheme object defines certain properties which will override Kepler.gl default style rules.

Styled-Components Theme Provider.

In order to customize Kepler.gl theme using ThemeProvider you can simply wrap Kepler.gl using ThemeProvider as it follows:

import {ThemeProvider} from 'styled-components';

const white = '#ffffff';
const customTheme = {
  sidePanelBg: white,
  titleTextColor: '#000000',
  sidePanelHeaderBg: '#f7f7F7',
  subtextColorActive: '#2473bd'
};

return (
  <ThemeProvider theme={customTheme}>
    <KeplerGl mapboxApiAccessToken={MAPBOX_TOKEN} id="map" width={800} height={800} />
  </ThemeProvider>
);

5. Render Custom UI components.

Everyone wants the flexibility to render custom kepler.gl components. Kepler.gl has a dependency injection system that allow you to inject components to KeplerGl replacing existing ones. All you need to do is to create a component factory for the one you want to replace, import the original component factory and call injectComponents at the root component of your app where KeplerGl is mounted. Take a look at examples/demo-app/src/app.js and see how it renders a custom side panel header in kepler.gl

import {injectComponents, PanelHeaderFactory} from '@kepler.gl/components';

// define custom header
const CustomHeader = () => <div>My kepler.gl app</div>;
const myCustomHeaderFactory = () => CustomHeader;

// Inject custom header into Kepler.gl, replacing default
const KeplerGl = injectComponents([[PanelHeaderFactory, myCustomHeaderFactory]]);

// render KeplerGl, it will render your custom header instead of the default
const MapContainer = () => (
  <div>
    <KeplerGl id="foo" />
  </div>
);

Using withState helper to add reducer state and actions to customized component as additional props.

import {withState, injectComponents, PanelHeaderFactory} from '@kepler.gl/components';
import {visStateLens} from '@kepler.gl/reducers';

// custom action wrap to mounted instance
const addTodo = text =>
  wrapTo('map', {
    type: 'ADD_TODO',
    text
  });

// define custom header
const CustomHeader = ({visState, addTodo}) => (
  <div onClick={() => addTodo('hello')}>{`${
    Object.keys(visState.datasets).length
  } dataset loaded`}</div>
);

// now CustomHeader will receive `visState` and `addTodo` as additional props.
const myCustomHeaderFactory = () =>
  withState(
    // keplerGl state lenses
    [visStateLens],
    // customMapStateToProps
    headerStateToProps,
    // actions
    {addTodo}
  )(CustomHeader);

Read more about replacing UI component

6. How to add data to map

To interact with a kepler.gl instance and add new data to it, you can dispatch the addDataToMap action from anywhere inside your app. It adds a dataset or multiple datasets to a kepler.gl instance and updates the full configuration (mapState, mapStyle, visState).

Parameters

• data Object *required

  • datasets (Array<Object> | Object) *required datasets can be a dataset or an array of datasets Each dataset object needs to have info and data property.

    • datasets.info Object -info of a dataset
      • datasets.info.id string id of this dataset. If config is defined, id should matches the dataId in config.
      • datasets.info.label string A display name of this dataset
    • datasets.data Object *required The data object, in a tabular format with 2 properties fields and rows
      • datasets.data.fields Array<Object> *required Array of fields,
        • datasets.data.fields.name string *required Name of the field,
      • datasets.data.rows Array<Array> *required Array of rows, in a tabular format with fields and rows

  • options Object

    • options.centerMap boolean default: true if centerMap is set to true kepler.gl will place the map view within the data points boundaries
    • options.readOnly boolean default: false if readOnly is set to true the left setting panel will be hidden
    • options.keepExistingConfig boolean default: false whether to keep exiting map config, including layers, filters and splitMaps.

• config Object this object will contain the full kepler.gl instance configuration {mapState, mapStyle, visState}

Kepler.gl provides an easy API KeplerGlSchema.getConfigToSave to generate a json blob of the current kepler instance configuration.

Examples

// app.js
import {addDataToMap} from '@kepler.gl/actions';

const sampleTripData = {
  fields: [
    {name: 'tpep_pickup_datetime', format: 'YYYY-M-D H:m:s', type: 'timestamp'},
    {name: 'pickup_longitude', format: '', type: 'real'},
    {name: 'pickup_latitude', format: '', type: 'real'}
  ],
  rows: [
    ['2015-01-15 19:05:39 +00:00', -73.99389648, 40.75011063],
    ['2015-01-15 19:05:39 +00:00', -73.97642517, 40.73981094],
    ['2015-01-15 19:05:40 +00:00', -73.96870422, 40.75424576]
  ]
};

const sampleConfig = {
  visState: {
    filters: [
      {
        id: 'me',
        dataId: 'test_trip_data',
        name: 'tpep_pickup_datetime',
        type: 'timeRange',
        view: 'enlarged'
      }
    ]
  }
};

this.props.dispatch(
  addDataToMap({
    datasets: {
      info: {
        label: 'Sample Taxi Trips in New York City',
        id: 'test_trip_data'
      },
      data: sampleTripData
    },
    option: {
      centerMap: true,
      readOnly: false
    },
    config: sampleConfig
  })
);

Read more about addDataToMap and Saving and loading maps with schema manager.