maplibre-gl-terradraw & Terra Draw

Period: September 2024 – present

Links: GitHub (watergis/maplibre-gl-terradraw) · Terra Draw · Terra Draw workshops

Background

For a long time, both Mapbox and MapLibre relied on mapbox-gl-draw to provide drawing functionality. However, it is no longer actively maintained, and it has become increasingly difficult to use with MapLibre. Terra Draw is a drawing library with a unified API for most web mapping libraries (MapLibre, Mapbox, Leaflet, OpenLayers, Google Maps and ArcGIS), but integrating its full functionality into MapLibre still requires a lot of configuration.

What I built

I developed maplibre-gl-terradraw, a MapLibre plugin that adds a pre-configured drawing feature with a single line of code:

map.addControl(new MaplibreTerradrawControl())

• All Terra Draw modes (point, line, polygon, rectangle, circle, freehand, etc.) with pre-configured icons
• Selecting, editing and deleting features, and downloading drawn features
• Customizable Terra Draw options and styles
• Measure control to measure line distances and polygon areas, and to query elevation from raster DEM sources (MapLibre Terrain, TerrainRGB and Terrarium)

I also contribute to Terra Draw itself and maintain hands-on workshop materials for developers.

Talks & workshops

• FOSS4G Europe 2025 Mostar: maplibre-gl-terradraw - new drawing plugin for maplibre-gl-js
• FOSS4G 2025 Auckland: Terra Draw workshop
• FOSS4G 2025 Auckland: maplibre-gl-terradraw - new drawing plugin for maplibre-gl-js
• FOSS4G 2026 Hiroshima: Terra Draw workshop
• FOSS4G 2026 Hiroshima: Terra Draw - bring drawing feature to all map applications

Tech stack

TypeScript, MapLibre GL JS, Terra Draw, Vite