Feature Service Layer Query - PBF format, Mapbox VT spec compliant?

[BrianFlood]

hello esri!

Are the PBF files returned from FeatureService layer queries compliant with the Mapbox Vector Tile spec? it appears they are missing "layers" information and as such, cannot be loaded into something like the open sourced Mapbox GL js library. Is the PBF format meant to be compliant with the spec (like VectorTileLayers) or is it just a slightly different format that is really just for the ESRI JS4.0 feature layers (and other ESRI clients I guess)? 

it would be really great if the PBF files returned could be easily used in any Mapbox VT compliant apps. Right now, we need to cut vector tiles on the fly and while this works, its seems wasteful and does not benefit from the edge caching and cache invalidation that AGOL feature services provide right out of the box.

here's a demo using tiles that are cut on the fly but I would really love to just be able to use pbfs created and maintained by AGOL (or Enterprise) natively

demo: testmap 

thanks!

brian

[BrianFlood · Accepted solution]

fwiw, it was relayed to me offline that the PBFs from the query endpoint are NOT in MVT format. seems like a weird choice since they are very close to MVT format, oh well.

@esri - any chance MVT will be supported in the future? 

[hoogw]

2 total different things, do not confuse by mix them.

f=pbf is same as f=json except pbf is 20% size of json,  pbf is binary like zip

f=zip, you have to unzip whole in memory before use

f=pbf you can use as you parsing

mvt vector tile is data set with bunch tiled data, many layers, many styles, labels, etc it has no relation to json.