Host Map Tiles on Azure with Authentication

Question

Hi,

I would like to have authenticated access to a static X/Y/Zoom tile layer I store on an Azure storage.
The tileURL should look something like following: 'https://baseURL/{z}/{x}/{y}.png'

Is there a good way to host static map tiles in azure?

My first idea was to store all the images '{z}/{x}/{y}.png' as blobs and then generate a SAS of a Blob storage folder as baseURL in my backend API, but of course that does not work, as a SAS cannot be a folder in a blob storage.
Maybe there is some way to generate a SAS-like baseURL to some kind of Azure storage? I kind of don't want to route all the traffic through the Backend but want to have authenticated/authorised (Azure AD B2C) access to the map layers I'm providing.

thanks for your help.

Answer 1

Azure Maps doesn't provide a service for this currently, however this may a part of the Azure Maps Creator platform in the future.

One option you could look at is putting the tiles in blob storage and then using it's authentication. If your map tile set is in the hundreds of thousands of tiles or less, this will likely work well. Be sure to enable CORs on your blob storage so that the tiles can be accessed in client web apps. I've used this approach for this sample tile set: https://azuremapscodesamples.azurewebsites.net/?sample=Tile%20Layer%20Options

If you have millions of tiles, then a tile server would likely be needed to maintain performance.