Routing module

The Routing Module enables displaying calculated routes and waypoints on maps with comprehensive functionality for visualizing navigation routes, alternative routes, turn-by-turn guidance, traffic incidents that occur along the calculated path, and route-related interactions.

What this module owns: the route lines, waypoints, section overlays, instruction arrows and summary bubbles it draws, and how they look — the theme and layers configuration below. It never restyles the roads underneath, which belong to the Styling module, and styling knobs never touch route layers. See Who owns what.

Initialization

import { TomTomMap, RoutingModule } from '@tomtom-org/maps-sdk/map';

// Initialize map
const map = new TomTomMap({ mapLibre: { container: 'map' } });

// Initialize Routes module with default configuration
const routingModule = await RoutingModule.create(map);

// Or with custom configuration
const routingModule = await RoutingModule.create(map, {
    displayUnits: {
        distance: { type: 'metric' }
    },
    waypointsSource: {
        entryPoints: 'main-when-available'
    }
});

Displaying routes

Display calculated routes on the map:

import { calculateRoute, geocodeOne } from '@tomtom-org/maps-sdk/services';

// Calculate a route with coordinates
const route = await calculateRoute({
    locations: [
        [4.9041, 52.3676], // Amsterdam
        [4.4777, 51.9244]  // Rotterdam
    ],
});

// Or calculate a route with geocoded locations
const waypoints = await Promise.all([
    geocodeOne('Amsterdam, Netherlands'),
    geocodeOne('Rotterdam, Netherlands')
]);

const routes = await calculateRoute({ locations: waypoints });

// Show the route
await routingModule.showRoutes(route);

Note: showRoutes draws the route line but does not show waypoint markers (start, stop, destination pins). Call showWaypoints separately to display them — see Waypoints below.

Displaying guidance on map

Request guidance instructions when calculating a route to show them visually:

import { calculateRoute } from '@tomtom-org/maps-sdk/services';

const route = await calculateRoute({
    locations: [
        [4.9041, 52.3676], // Amsterdam
        [4.4777, 51.9244]  // Rotterdam
    ],
    guidance: {
        type: 'coded'
    }
});

// Display route with guidance on map
await routingModule.showRoutes(route);

Route selection

Change which route appears as selected when displaying multiple routes:

import { calculateRoute } from '@tomtom-org/maps-sdk/services';

// Calculate route with alternatives
const routes = await calculateRoute({
    locations: [
        [4.9041, 52.3676], // Amsterdam
        [4.4777, 51.9244]  // Rotterdam
    ],
    maxAlternatives: 2,
});

// Show the routes (first route selected by default)
await routingModule.showRoutes(routes);

// Show the routes with specific selection
await routingModule.showRoutes(routes, { selectedIndex: 1 });

// Switch to second route
await routingModule.selectRoute(1);

// Switch back to first route
await routingModule.selectRoute(0);

Waypoints

showRoutes only draws route lines — waypoint markers (start, stop, and destination pins) are not included. You must call showWaypoints separately:

const locations = [
    [4.9041, 52.3676], // Amsterdam
    [4.4777, 51.9244]  // Rotterdam
];

const route = await calculateRoute({ locations });

// Draw the route line
await routingModule.showRoutes(route);

// Waypoint markers must be shown separately
await routingModule.showWaypoints(locations);

// Clear waypoints independently from routes
await routingModule.clearWaypoints();

A stop's pin is labelled with its name, and — when the stop carries a pauseDurationSeconds — with how long the route waits there:

const locations = [
    [2.1734, 41.3851],
    {
        type: 'Feature',
        geometry: { type: 'Point', coordinates: [2.4467, 41.5381] },
        // the pin reads "30 min" under the stop name
        properties: { pauseDurationSeconds: 30 * 60 }
    },
    [2.8214, 41.9794]
];

await routingModule.showRoutes(await calculateRoute({ locations }));
await routingModule.showWaypoints(locations);

The wait is formatted with the SDK's display units, and the label is the routeWaypointLabel layer — restyle or replace it through layers.waypoints.routeWaypointLabel like any other routing layer.

Charging stop pins say the same thing in the same way: their label carries the whole time spent at the stop, which is the charging plus any wait asked for at the same place. A label that wants only the charging part can still read chargingDuration:

const routingModule = await RoutingModule.create(map, {
    chargingStops: { text: { title: ['format', ['get', 'chargingDuration'], {}] } }
});

For more control over marker appearance and behavior (custom icons, popups, click handlers), use the Places Module to render waypoints as place markers instead.

Custom styling

Customize route appearance through theme for the whole route or layers per layer, both live on the route style playground:

import { RoutingModule } from '@tomtom-org/maps-sdk/map';

// Override paint properties on specific route layers.
// Each entry under `layers` is keyed by layer group (mainLines, sections, …),
// and each layer accepts partial `paint`/`layout` overrides that are merged
// onto the SDK defaults.
const routingModule = await RoutingModule.create(map, {
    layers: {
        mainLines: {
            routeLine: {
                paint: {
                    'line-color': '#FF0000', // Red main route line
                    'line-width': 6
                }
            }
        }
    }
});

Charging stop icons

Long-distance EV routes place a charging stop at the end of each leg. Supply your own sprites with chargingStops.icon.customIcons, then pick one per stop with mapping:

const routingModule = await RoutingModule.create(map, {
  chargingStops: {
    icon: {
      customIcons: [
        { id: 'slow-charger', image: chargerSlowSVG },
        { id: 'fast-charger', image: chargerFastSVG, offsetX: 0, offsetY: -10 }
      ],
      mapping: {
        basedOn: 'chargingSpeed',
        value: { slow: 'slow-charger', regular: 'slow-charger', fast: 'fast-charger', 'ultra-fast': 'fast-charger' }
      }
    }
  }
});

mapping can also be { basedOn: 'custom', fn: (stop) => spriteID } for any other rule, and it works without customIcons if you only want to point at sprites the style already ships.

offsetX/offsetY (pixels) shift an icon from its coordinate, for icons whose visual tip isn't at their own geometric bottom. Positive offsetX moves right, positive offsetY moves down. They only apply to a customIcons entry that also provides an image — an entry naming an existing sprite by id alone ignores them.

Route sections

showRoutes() draws a separate overlay for each stretch of road the response describes: urban stretches, motorways, low-emission zones, tunnels, ferries, traffic jams, toll roads and so on. Every one of them is configured under sections, keyed by section type, on the same set of knobs.

const routingModule = await RoutingModule.create(map, {
    sections: {
        urban: { visible: true },                                            // draw a type nothing draws by default
        lowEmissionZone: { color: '#1B7A43', opacity: 0.8 },                 // deepen the green of one that is
        tunnel: { color: '#402060', style: 'halo' },                         // restyle one that is drawn already
        tollRoad: { icon: { image: 'poi-toll_plaza', placement: 'along' } },  // put an icon on another
        traffic: { visible: false }                                          // and drop one
    }
});

Whether a type is drawn when you configure nothing is per type, and follows one rule: a type draws itself when its stretches are sparse along a route and consequential for the driver. carTrain, ferry, lowEmissionZone, tollRoad, tollVignette, traffic, tunnel and vehicleRestricted qualify — money to pay, a permit to hold, a road the vehicle may not use, or the vehicle going onto a train — and switch off with { visible: false }.

speedLimit draws itself too, and it is the one type that does so while running nearly a route's whole length — it can, because it posts a sign per section rather than banding the route. See below.

The other six are opt-in and switch on with { visible: true }. motorway and urban each run nearly a route's whole length, so a band drawn for them says nothing and buries the route line — and both are already legible from the base map underneath.

sectionDrawsByDefault(type) reports which side of that a type falls on, for a UI that shows the types as switches. Reading the map instead cannot answer it: a route carrying no ferry sections draws no ferry layer, so an absent layer looks the same as a type switched off.

The knobs:

style chooses between the two ways a section can mark a stretch of the route, and sets both the layer order and the width, since neither reads as intended without the other:

• halo puts the section beneath the route's own lines and wider than its outline, so it shows as a band hugging the route on both sides. The route keeps its colour. This is the default for the ten generated types that band the route and for tollRoad — so a low-emission zone reads as a green outline around the route.
• inline puts the section over the route line at the route's own width, so the route itself appears in the section's colour along that stretch. This is the default for ferry, traffic, tunnel and vehicleRestricted — it is why a route goes grey through a tunnel.

Switching a type's style at runtime restacks its layers, so applyConfig is enough to move a section from one side of the route line to the other.

Not every type answers to every knob, and which knobs a type takes is part of its type: traffic colours its line by magnitudeOfDelay and takes its icons from the incident data, so sections.traffic.color does not compile rather than compiling and drawing nothing. speedLimit draws no line at all, so it takes visible and sign and none of the line knobs. For a UI that builds controls from a section type, sectionSupportsKnob(type, knob) answers the same question at runtime.

The types covered: carpool, carTrain, ferry, importantRoadStretch, lowEmissionZone, motorway, pedestrian, speedLimit, tollRoad, tollVignette, traffic, tunnel, unpaved, urban and vehicleRestricted — every one live on the route sections playground.

When the knobs are not enough, the full layer spec is reachable under layers.sections, keyed by the same types. For the generated types the layer id is derived from the section type, so motorway is drawn by routeSectionMotorwayLine and speedLimit by routeSectionSpeedLimitSign:

const routingModule = await RoutingModule.create(map, {
    layers: {
        sections: {
            motorway: {
                routeSectionMotorwayLine: {
                    paint: { 'line-color': '#1F6FB2', 'line-dasharray': [2, 1] }
                }
            },
            tunnel: {
                routeTunnelLine: { paint: { 'line-blur': 2 } }
            }
        }
    }
});

Speed limits are posted, not banded

speedLimit is the one type whose information is a number rather than a stretch, and it is drawn accordingly: the module posts a road sign per section, and that is the whole of what the type draws. Asking for the sections is all it takes.

// The signs need no configuration — asking for the sections is enough.
const routes = await calculateRoute({ locations, sectionTypes: ['speedLimit', 'country'] });
await routingModule.showRoutes(routes);

The sign follows the road rather than the reader. Ask for country sections alongside the speed limits and each sign takes the convention of the country its stretch runs through:

A country the SDK has no entry for posts the white disc in km/h. Where mph is posted the number is converted and rounded to the step signs come in, so a London stretch reads 30 and a Californian one 65, both from the same maxSpeedLimitInKmh. Without country sections the display units decide the face and the unit, and sign.unit overrides both.

A sign stands where the limit changes, as the road's own does. That is exact: speed limit sections tile a route end to end and no two consecutive ones carry the same limit, so every section boundary is a change. Signs scale with the zoom as the ferry and toll-road icons do.

sign.placement: 'along' repeats the sign down the stretch instead, at a fixed screen spacing. Nothing then marks where the limit changed, but a reader zoomed into the middle of a 50 km stretch still sees the limit in force; the default posts nothing between one change and the next.

sign.minzoom defaults to 10, where the signs stop shrinking. Further out, a route's changes fall in the same few pixels and the handful that survive are an arbitrary sample of the drive. Lower it if your map is about the limits themselves.

Since the signs are all the type draws, { visible: false } switches them off the way it switches off any other section. The sign knob carries the rest:

const routingModule = await RoutingModule.create(map, {
    sections: {
        speedLimit: {
            sign: { minzoom: 8, priority: 'aboveRouteIcons' }
        }
    }
});

priority settles which symbol survives when two want the same spot. MapLibre resolves collisions from the topmost layer down, so the layer underneath gives way:

• belowMapLabels — a sign yields to everything, so it never lands on a street or place name, at the cost of showing fewer in a city.
• belowRouteIcons — a sign yields to the route's own icons, but takes precedence over the base map's labels.
• aboveRouteIcons — a sign yields to nothing, for a map whose subject is the limits.

The default follows placement, because what a dropped sign costs does: belowRouteIcons under atChange, where that sign is the only one posting its change, and belowMapLabels under along, where the next repeat posts the same limit again.

Both knobs are live on the route sections playground; speed limit signs by country posts one limit four ways.

Each section also gets its own event scope and getShown() entry. The generated types are keyed <type>Sections; the other five keep the names their sources have always had (ferries, tollRoads, incidents, tunnels, vehicleRestricted):

routingModule.events.lowEmissionZoneSections.on('click', (feature, lngLat) => {
    console.log('Low-emission zone section');
});

const urbanSections = routingModule.getShown().urbanSections;

Border crossings

country sections partition a route end to end, each ending where the next begins, so every seam between two of them is a border. A crossing is that seam — a point rather than a stretch, which is why it takes knobs of its own rather than a place in the catalogue above. Each one is a plaque naming both countries in the direction of travel by their ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes, ES → FR. Ask for country sections and the crossings draw themselves:

const routes = await calculateRoute({ locations, sectionTypes: ['country'] });
await routingModule.showRoutes(routes);

The module reads the route it was given, so a route that stays inside one country, or that was never asked for its country sections, draws none. Re-entering a country counts as a second crossing, back the way it came — Geneva to Lausanne via Annecy draws CH → FR and then FR → CH.

const routingModule = await RoutingModule.create(map, {
    countryCrossings: { minzoom: 6, color: '#0B5FA5' }
});

Crossings get an event scope and a getShown() entry like the rest of the route. A clicked crossing also hands over the two country sections it joins, so you can reach the stretch either side of the border rather than only the pair of codes on the plaque:

routingModule.events.countryCrossings.on('click', (crossing) => {
    const { label, fromSection, toSection } = crossing.properties;
    console.log(label, fromSection.endPointIndex, toSection.startPointIndex); // 'ES → FR' 1941 1941
});

Anything these knobs cannot express is a layers.countryCrossings.routeCountryCrossing override, which merges into the layer like any other. Crossings draw under the waypoint pins and the summary bubbles, so a plaque never covers a stop the drive was planned around; a beforeID on that override puts them anywhere else in the stack.

Events

Handle user interactions with routes and waypoints:

// Route click events
routingModule.events.mainLines.on('click', (feature, lngLat) => {
    console.log('Route clicked:', feature.properties);
    console.log('Coordinates:', lngLat);
});

// Waypoint events
routingModule.events.waypoints.on('click', (feature, lngLat) => {
    console.log('Waypoint:', feature.properties);
});

// Traffic incident events
routingModule.events.incidents.on('hover', (feature, lngLat) => {
    console.log('Traffic delay:', feature.features.map(feature => feature.properties.delayInSeconds));
});

// Turn-by-turn instruction events
routingModule.events.instructionLines.on('click', (feature, lngLat) => {
    console.log('Instruction properties:', feature.properties);
});

// Summary bubble events
routingModule.events.summaryBubbles.on('click', (feature, lngLat) => {
    console.log('Route summary:', feature.properties);
});

// Route section events
routingModule.events.ferries.on('click', (feature, lngLat) => {
    console.log('Ferry section');
});

// The `tollRoads` overlay draws the `tollRoad` sections — every stretch that costs money to drive,
// per-use tolls plus vignette-only motorways and urban charge zones
routingModule.events.tollRoads.on('click', (feature, lngLat) => {
    console.log('Charged road section');
});

routingModule.events.tunnels.on('click', (feature, lngLat) => {
    console.log('Tunnel section');
});

routingModule.events.vehicleRestricted.on('click', (feature, lngLat) => {
    console.log('Vehicle restricted section');
});

routingModule.events.chargingStops.on('click', (feature, lngLat) => {
    console.log('EV charging station');
});

// Remove event listeners
routingModule.events.mainLines.off('click', handler);

Multiple module instances

You can create multiple independent instances of the Routing module, each with its own configuration and styling. This is useful for comparing different route types or displaying routes for multiple users.

// Create separate instances for different route types
const carRoutes = await RoutingModule.create(map, {
    customLayerSpec: {
        layers: {
            mainLines: [{ layerSpec: { paint: { 'line-color': '#2ECC71' } } }]
        }
    }
});

const truckRoutes = await RoutingModule.create(map, {
    customLayerSpec: {
        layers: {
            mainLines: [{ layerSpec: { paint: { 'line-color': '#E67E22' } } }]
        }
    }
});

// Each instance manages its own routes independently
await carRoutes.showRoutes(carRoute);
await truckRoutes.showRoutes(truckRoute);

Reading shown data

Use getShown() to retrieve all routing data currently displayed on the map. This returns the exact data previously passed to showRoutes() and showWaypoints():

const shown = routingModule.getShown();
console.log(`Showing ${shown.mainLines.features.length} routes`);
console.log(`Showing ${shown.waypoints.features.length} waypoints`);

Check whether any routes are currently displayed:

const shown = routingModule.getShown();
if (shown.mainLines.features.length > 0) {
    console.log('Routes are displayed');
}

The returned object includes: mainLines, waypoints, incidents, ferries, chargingStops, tollRoads, tunnels, vehicleRestricted, instructionLines, instructionArrows, summaryBubbles, and countryCrossings, plus one <type>Sections entry per generated section type — urbanSections, motorwaySections and the rest.

API reference

For complete documentation of all Routing Module properties, methods, and types, see the RoutingModule API Reference.

Related guides and examples

Services integration

• Route Planning Parameters - Comprehensive route planning with configuration options
• Locations - Specifying route planning locations
• Geocoding - Convert addresses to coordinates for route waypoints and destinations

Related examples

• Route - Basic route calculation and display on the map
• Route with Alternatives - Display multiple route options for comparison
• Waypoints - Multi-stop route visualization with interactive waypoints
• Map route reconstruction playground - Interactive route building and editing
• Route stop wait playground - A stop's wait on its pin, and in the journey time
• Route sections playground - Every section type on one set of knobs, and the speed-limit sign controls
• Speed limit signs by country - A section's number posted as the road sign its country uses

Related map modules

• Places Module - Display route waypoints and destinations as interactive markers
• User Interaction Events - Handle user interactions with routes and route segments