Leaflet has revolutionized interactive web mapping with its lightweight and flexible framework. Central to its success is the vibrant ecosystem of plugins that empower developers to create feature-rich maps effortlessly. Leaflet-Geoman is one of these plugins. In this post, we delve into the current state of the Leaflet plugin ecosystem, exploring its diversity and popularity. By understanding the most popular Leaflet plugins, you can make informed decisions to enhance your mapping applications with proven, community-supported tools.
As of September 2024, there are 551 plugins available on Leaflet’s Plugin Database. The plugins span across seven categories with 36 subcategories depending on the functionality of the plugin. To visually illustrate the variety of plugins, we created a treemap of the Leaflet Plugin categories with their respective subcategories as well as the count of plugins in each subcategory. The top three categories are:
- Map interaction (138 plugins)
- Overlay display (133 plugins)
- Tile & image layers (84 plugins)
Ranking Leaflet Plugins by Number of GitHub Stars
While the sheer number of plugins highlights the ecosystem's diversity, understanding their popularity provides deeper insights into their impact. Let us explore how Leaflet plugins rank based on GitHub stars, a strong indicator of community adoption. Not all of the plugins are hosted on GitHub, but 512 of them are. Aggregating the number of GitHub stars across the categories and subcategories, the top three most popular categories become:
- Overlay display (21,438 stars)
- Tile & image layers (13,347 stars)
- Map interaction (11,327 stars)
The top three categories remain the same, map interaction is less popular when measured by github stars. We also created a treemap of the Leaflet Plugin categories with their respective subcategories now with the number of GitHub stars in each subcategory.
Top Leaflet Plugins
There are 14 plugins that have more than 1,000 GitHub stars. The table below summarises these. These plugins enhance interactive maps by providing advanced features such as marker clustering, geometry management, customizable tile providers, integration with frameworks like React, Vue, and Angular, route searching, geocoding, and heatmap support. The most popular is the react-leaflet plugin, which offers React components for Leaflet maps with more than 5,000 stars.
| Ranking | Category | Subcategory | Plugin | Description | Maintainer | Stars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Integration | Frameworks & Build Systems | react-leaflet | React components for Leaflet maps. | Paul Le Cam | 5,099 |
| 2 | Overlay Display | Clustering/Decluttering | Leaflet.markercluster | Marker clustering solution. | Dave Leaver | 3,941 |
| 3 | Interaction with Geometries/Features | Edit Geometries | Leaflet-Geoman | Geometry creation management for Leaflet maps. | Florian Bischof | 2,185 |
| 4 | Tile & Image Layers | Basemap Providers | leaflet-providers | Configurations for free tile providers like OSM, OpenCycleMap. | leaflet-extras members | 2,148 |
| 5 | Interaction with Geometries/Features | Edit Geometries | Leaflet.draw | Drawing tool for features like polygons and markers. | Jacob Toye | 1,958 |
| 6 | Integration | Frameworks & Build Systems | Vue2Leaflet | Vue.js framework that wraps Leaflet. | Mickaël KoRiGaN | 1,953 |
| 7 | Tile & Image Layers | Vector Tiles | geojson-vt | Library for slicing GeoJSON data into vector tiles. | Mapbox | 1,877 |
| 8 | Tile & Image Layers | Basemap Providers | Esri Leaflet | Tools for using ArcGIS services with Leaflet. | Patrick Arlt | 1,604 |
| 9 | Overlay Display | Heatmaps | Leaflet.heat | A tiny, simple, and fast Leaflet heatmap plugin. | Vladimir Agafonkin | 1,543 |
| 10 | Integration | Frameworks & Build Systems | Angular Leaflet directive | AngularJS web framework for Leaflet. | David Rubert | 1,503 |
| 11 | Overlay Display | Markers & Renderers | Leaflet.Awesome-Markers | Font Awesome icons/Twitter Bootstrap icons. | Lennard Voogdt | 1,277 |
| 12 | Miscellaneous | Routing | Leaflet Routing Machine | Control for route search with via points, displaying itinerary and alternative routes. | Per Liedman | 1,075 |
| 13 | Miscellaneous | Geocoding | Leaflet GeoSearch | Small geocoding plugin that brings geosearching to Leaflet. | Stephan Meijer | 1,031 |
| 14 | Tile & Image Layers | Basemap Providers | Leaflet.ChineseTmsProviders | Contains configurations for various Chinese tile providers. | Tao Huang | 1,008 |
Leaflet-Geoman, the Leading Leaflet Plugin in Geometry Interaction
At Geoman, we develop an application that gives your Leaflet maps the ability to interact with and handle geospatial data. Our Geoman-Leaflet plugin belongs in the Edit geometries subcategory and in the Interaction with geometries/features category. It currently ranks number one in both the category and subcategory as measured by the number of GitHub stars. Looking at the overall ranking across the 551 Leaflet Plugins, Leaflet-Geoman ranks number three by the number of GitHub stars. We are grateful for the tremendous support from the open-source community and are excited to continue extending the capabilities of Leaflet.
To dive further into the data, visit the Leaflet Plugin Database here.