Road labels layer (optional)

Road labels layer (deprecated)

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Note
The road_labels layer is deprecated and will be removed in January 2027. Instead, use the roads layer that provides similar data.

The road_labels layer refers to the textual information associated with road features on a map. These labels provide important details about roads and highways, making it easier for users to navigate and understand the geography.

This is an optional layer, and its content is defined as follows.

Layer name: road_labels
Geometry types: line

The road_labels layer serves as an optional component, offering deduplicated labeling properties (name, ref, network, and shield_text) and streamlined label placement geometries for various types of transportation, encompassing but not limited to highways, major roads, minor roads, paths, and ferries, all of which are part of the roads layer. Within the roads layer, each road segment carries labeling properties, and these properties often repeat, especially for consecutive road segments. To eliminate duplicates and streamline data for more efficient client-side processing, the road_labels layer retains pre-merged and simplified representations of consecutive road segments that share the same name properties. However, you have the flexibility to choose between the roads and road_labels layers depending on your specific requirements for labeling properties.

Shared properties

Every feature in the road-labels layer includes a set of properties that define it, regardless of the specific type of label it represents.

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Note
These properties are referred to as common properties in the Tilezen schema. For more information, see Tile layers.

The following list shows the properties specific to road_labels features:

name - Represents the local name of the feature, expressed in the local language script.
ref - Serves as a commonly recognized reference for roads, this property includes identifiers like I 90 for Interstate 90, especially useful when used with road shields.
network - A useful property for shields and road selections, network contains road network types, such as US:I for the United States Interstate network. For more information, see Road network values.
shield_text - Contains the text to be shown on shields. For example, I 90 corresponds to a network of US:I and a shield_text of 90. This simplifies shield display, eliminating the need for further processing. Some roads may include non-numeric characters in this property, as seen with the M1 motorway in the UK, where shield_text is M1 instead of just 1.
all_route_types - Lists all the route types to which a road segment belongs as a list of semicolon-separated numeric codes and is used in shield styling, taking into account country-specific conventions.

Example

The following code snippet shows sample vector data for a road_labels feature in the GeoJSON format:

{
  "type": "Feature",
  "geometry": {
    "type": "LineString",
    "coordinates": [
      [
        13.428640365600586,
        52.51817948774524
      ],
      [
        13.430078029632568,
        52.518192544944384
      ],
      [
        13.448081016540527,
        52.51635144156805
      ]
    ]
  },
  "properties": {
    "kind": "major_road",
    "kind_detail": "secondary",
    "name": "Karl-Marx-Allee",
    "name:de": "Karl-Marx-Allee",
    "ref": "B1",
    "all_route_types": "3;3",
    "shield_text": "1",
    "all_shield_texts": "1;5",
    "all_networks": "DE:BS;DE:BS",
    "all_refs": "B1;B5",
    "network": "DE:BS",
    "vt_layer": "road_labels"
  }
}

Next steps

For more information about other layer types available in the HERE Vector Tile API, see Tile Layers.