Using XYZ tiled map services

A tiled map service allows you to efficiently display large raster data sets from web services. The raster dataset is broken into evenly-sized tiles at varying resolutions to create predictable naming conventions and bandwidth requirements for large datasets. QGIS now supports this standard as a part of the raster layer API. In this recipe, we'll load the Open Street Map tiled map service.

Getting ready

Open the QGIS Python console by selecting the Plugins menu and then clicking on Python Console.

How to do it...

We will quickly create a QGIS raster layer, and then we'll add it to the map:

1. Load the raster layer, specifying the type and the web service URL in the data source parameter. We'll also assign it the name OSM (OpenStreetMap):

           rasterLyr = QgsRasterLayer("type=xyz&url=http://c.tile
                                       .openstreetmap.org/{z}/{x}/{y}
                                       .png", "OSM", "wms&quot...