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Route Engine (Valhalla) ​

Details can be found on GitHub: Route Engine.

Generating and Updating the Valhalla Index for Production ​

Due to the massive memory footprint (upwards of ~32GB RAM) required to index the unified Swiss network into a navigable .tar file, we pre-compute the Valhalla index on beefy local hardware and host it on Google Drive. This enforces rapid deployment boots downstream in production!

Whenever you update Swisstopo data or tweak parsing rules within route_engine/helper_scripts/converter.py, follow these steps to deploy the new routing graph:

1. Build the Data Context (OSM.PBF) ​

You first need to translate Swisstopo SHP parameters into OSM tags that our dynamic Map/ECharts configuration can read.

  1. Place your downloaded Swisstopo directory inside route_engine/resources/routing_shp/
  2. Run the internal converter bridge to spit out an osm.pbf file:
bash
cd route_engine/helper_scripts
docker build -t shp_to_osm .
docker run --rm -v $(pwd)/../resources/routing_shp:/data shp_to_osm
  1. Move the generated swissTLM3D_TLM_STRASSE.osm.pbf file upstream into route_engine/sources/:
bash
cp ../resources/routing_shp/*.osm.pbf ../sources/

2. Generate the Valhalla .tar Archive ​

Clear out any old files (you should only have your .osm.pbf and .gitkeep inside route_engine/sources/). Execute Valhalla interactively to force a tile compilation sweep from the top-level route engine directory. When prompted, type y to safely wipe all old Valhalla artifacts before generating the new data:

bash
cd route_engine
sudo rm -rf sources/valhalla_tiles.tar sources/valhalla_tiles sources/valhalla.json sources/duplicateways.txt sources/file_hashes.txt
docker run --rm -v $(pwd)/sources:/custom_files -e build_tar=True -e use_tiles_ignore_pbf=False -e force_rebuild=True ghcr.io/gis-ops/docker-valhalla/valhalla:latest

After a few moments, this will output a ~400MB valhalla_tiles.tar file into the sources folder.

3. Upload to Google Drive ​

  1. Upload your new valhalla_tiles.tar to your standard engineering Google Drive folder.
  2. Enable direct access (Anyone with the link can view).
  3. Extract the raw File ID string from the URL .../file/d/[FILE_ID]/view.

4. Bump the Container Cache Version ​

Open up route_engine/entrypoint.sh in the codebase.

  1. Paste your new drive hash into VALHALLA_TILE_ID:
    bash
    VALHALLA_TILE_ID="[FILE_ID]"
  2. Bump the INDEX_CACHE_VERSION identifier! E.g. v3-2027-01-01.

Commit these changes. Upon the next deployment cycle on the hosting servers, Valhalla's entrypoint script will see the version increment, automatically wipe the stalemated local graph mappings in its volume, and securely redownload your crisp new version!