PSGA Scotland members: Please replace references on this page to the domain tile.viaeuropa.uk.com with tile.publicsectormapping.gov.scot
WMTS (Web Map Tile Service) is an efficient method of delivering pre-generated or dynamically rendered maps over the Internet. It is an OGC standard supported by many GIS software products and web mapping APIs.
viaEuropa supports WMTS version 1.0.0.
viaEuropa supports WMTS over both http and https.
WMTS service requests are made using an encoding type. This basically describes how parameters are passed to the service. It is not necessary to understand the differences between these encoding type but it is useful to know which ones are supported by your software.
To use WMTS, you must use an end point to make a Get Capabilities request. This allows your software to be informed (using a language called XML) about the capabilities, features and limits of a WMTS service. Each map layer supported by viaEuropa has its own access end point. The URL for a viaEuropa WMTS Get Capabilities can be in one of the following formats. You must replace the parameters shown in {curly-brackets}.
REST (if in doubt, try this one first):
https://tile.viaeuropa.uk.com/{id}/{map}/wmts/1.0.0/WMTSCapabilities.xml
KVP:
https://tile.viaeuropa.uk.com/{id}/{map}/wmts?service=GetCapabilities
where:
{id} is your viaEuropa ID
{map} is the required map layer. e.g. m0100 (see Reference/Map Inventory)
After processing a Get Capabilities request, your software should present a single map layer as available.
Esri users - We are aware of a known WMTS (not WMS) issue with multiple Esri products. It only affects map layers projected using British National Grid (BNG) and does not affect our BNG2 or SPM WMTS map layers. The problem occurs at zoom level 7, which has a nominal scale of 1:75k. Unlike British National Grid, WMTS uses a top-left origin and zoom level 7 is slightly different because it has a different origin to the other levels. This is simply due to the way the tiles align as the scales supported. While WMTS does have a way of specifying origins on a per-zoom level, Esri software does not seem to support it. It’s been reported and acknowledged as bug (BUG-000119577), but Esri do not plans to fix it.
We provide a workaround which simply removes this zoom level from the BNG stacks. When viaEuropa receives service requests, if it can detect it is from Esri software, it applies the workaround automatically, but this is not 100% effective. So, there is a manual method too. If you place ?client=agol or ?client=arcgis on the end of the getCapabilities request (or as a custom parameter), that will force the workaround. For example, try the following WMTS getCapabilities link (replacing {id} with one of your own IDs and replacing {map} with the code of your preferred map stack):https://tile.viaeuropa.uk.com/{id}/{map}/wmts/1.0.0/WMTSCapabilities.xml?client=arcgis
When using this WMTS end-point, take a look at the zoom levels reported and check that level 7 (1:75,000) is no longer being displayed.
For further details on using viaEuropa WMTS with popular GIS software and web mapping APIs, see the Using viaEuropa section.