The usual way to put a map on a Drupal site is Google Maps. It is easy to start: get an API key, paste it in, and a monthly free allowance covers your first maps. After that, Google bills per map load. The map of a venue is the same for every reader, yet every view is a new request, counted and billed, and every reader's browser talks to Google while they look. The map doesn't change; the meter keeps running.

There is an open alternative to Google's data. OpenStreetMap is built by volunteers and published under an open licence. I wanted maps drawn from it that a site downloads once and keeps, so I built Maper.

What it does

• Your server downloads each map tile once, keeps it in private files, and draws the map itself. Browsers receive the finished drawing, never a tile, so no third party sees your readers.
• No API key and no per-view billing. Tiles come from OpenFreeMap, a free, donation-funded service, or from a Protomaps file you host yourself, in which case nothing is downloaded at all.
• It is polite to the tile provider: downloading stays off until you set a contact address. After that, every download respects daily and per-job limits, one request at a time, and backs off when the provider asks.
• Restyling is free. Tiles hold shapes and names, not colours, so switching or editing a map style redraws every map from the tiles you already have. Three styles ship today, and five more come in the next release.
• It works the Drupal way: a Maper map block for nodes (a venue, or the dates of a tour), and a Maper map format for Views, where every result row becomes a pointer with its own card.
• Headless if you want it: the server hands any front end the map as JSON, with a reference script in plain JavaScript.

Is it real?

It runs in production on Oído en Vivo, a live-music listings site in Colombia: 836 tiles, 69 MB, serving the maps of 550 places and every search. See it at https://oidoenvivo.com/buscar

Where it stands

This is 1.0.0-alpha1. It needs Drupal 11.2+, PHP 8.3 and a private file path. Alphas have no upgrade path, so reinstall between them. Beta comes next, and from then on every change carries an update.

• Project: https://www.drupal.org/project/maper
• composer require drupal/maper:1.0.0-alpha1

I'm the author. I'd welcome bug reports, rough edges and questions in the issue queue, or right here.

Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).