Integrating Sarkoa with QGIS: A Step-by-Step Guide

You can use Sarkoa-hosted layers directly in QGIS without downloading full datasets. Here’s a minimal setup so you can add cloud layers to your projects in minutes.

Add a COG (raster) layer

If your raster is stored as a Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF, open QGIS and add a new raster layer. Choose Protocol: HTTP(S), and enter the full URL to your COG (e.g. https://your-bucket.sarkoa.io/data/dem.tif). QGIS will use range requests to fetch only the parts of the image in view. No need to download the file first.

Add a vector tile layer

For vector tiles, use the “Vector Tiles” data source in QGIS. When prompted for the URL, use your Sarkoa tile URL template, e.g. https://your-bucket.sarkoa.io/tiles/{z}/{x}/{y}.mvt. QGIS will request tiles as you pan and zoom. Styling works like any other vector layer.

Add a GeoJSON or other vector URL

For smaller vector datasets served as GeoJSON (or similar), add a vector layer and point the source to the file’s URL. QGIS will load it over the network. Suited to layers that fit in memory; for large datasets, prefer vector tiles.

Tips

Use meaningful layer names in your project so you can tell cloud layers apart. If a layer is slow, check that the data is in a cloud-friendly format (COG for rasters, tiled vectors for big vector data). Once the connection is set up, you can save the project and reuse the same cloud layers in future work.