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ETL-CalTopo

Bring CALTopo Maps into the TAK System

Modes🔗

The Layer supports two independent data flows, the Outgoing flow is off unless configured.

  • Incoming (Schedule) - Ingests the objects of a single shared CalTopo Map, or the live Shared Locations of a CalTopo Team Account
  • Outgoing (event:create) - Creates a new CalTopo Map in a Team Account every time a CoreEvent is created and shared with the Layer Connection

Outgoing - CoreEvent to CalTopo Map🔗

Enable the Outgoing flow of the Layer and subscribe it to event:create. The Service Account requires at minimum Update permissions on the Team (see Team Access Token below) and the Layer requires the event:read & event:update permissions. Each created Map is titled after the CoreEvent callsign and contains a single Marker at the Event location whose description carries the Event remarks and human readable location.

The Map ID is filed under the caltopo external ID of the CoreEvent, so an Event that already has one (ie: a redelivered message) never gets a second Map. Unless the Map is PRIVATE, its URL is also added to the Links of the CoreEvent.

Variable Default Description
AccountId Service Account ID the credentials belong to
TeamId Team ID the Maps are created in, from the Team admin page URL https://caltopo.com/group/{TeamId}/admin/details
CredentialId Service Account Credential ID
CredentialSecret Service Account Credential Secret
MapMode sar sar (Search & Rescue) or cal (Recreational)
MapSharing SECRET PRIVATE (creator only), SECRET (secret URL), URL (public URL) or PUBLIC
MapLayers [{ "layer": "mbt" }] Active base layers - ie: mbt (MapBuilder Topo), mbh (MapBuilder Hybrid), imagery
MarkerColor FF0000 Hex colour of the Marker placed at the Event location
DEBUG false Print results in logs

Team Access Token🔗

A Service Account has its own Account ID, a Credential ID and a Credential Secret. The Team it belongs to has a separate Team ID, visible in the URL of the Team admin page - the Outgoing flow needs both.

The Team Account mode requires a Service Account Credential ID and Secret from CalTopo. You must be an admin of the CalTopo Team to create an access token.

  1. Login to CalTopo and click your username in the top bar

    Click your username

  2. In the popup, under Team Membership, click Administer for the team account you wish to configure

    Click Administer

  3. On the Team page, click the Details tab

    Click the Details tab

  4. Under Service Accounts, click Create Service Account and create a new Service Account with at minimum Read permissions (Update permissions are required for the Outgoing flow to create Maps)

    Create a Service Account

Development🔗

DFPC provided Lambda ETLs are currently all written in NodeJS through the use of a AWS Lambda optimized Docker container. Documentation for the Dockerfile can be found in the AWS Help Center

npm install

Add a .env file in the root directory that gives the ETL script the necessary variables to communicate with a local ETL server. When the ETL is deployed the ETL_API and ETL_LAYER variables will be provided by the Lambda Environment

{
    "ETL_API": "http://localhost:5001",
    "ETL_LAYER": "19"
}

To run the task, ensure the local CloudTAK server is running and then run with typescript runtime or build to JS and run natively with node

ts-node task.ts

npm run build
cp .env dist/
node dist/task.js

Deployment🔗

Deployment into the CloudTAK environment for configuration is done via automatic releases to the DFPC AWS environment.

Github actions will build and push docker releases on every version tag which can then be automatically configured via the CloudTAK API.

Non-DFPC users will need to setup their own docker => ECS build system via something like Github Actions or AWS Codebuild.

Info

This page is generated daily from the README of dfpc-coe/etl-caltopo (last fetched 2026-10-08). Changes should be made in that repository.