Getting Started

What is pbfhogg?

pbfhogg is a Rust library and CLI toolkit for reading, writing, and transforming OpenStreetMap PBF files. It's designed for planet-scale operations (80+ GB files) on normal hardware (30 GB RAM).

Quick Start

As a library

toml

[dependencies]
pbfhogg = "0.3"

rust

use pbfhogg::{ElementReader, Element};

let reader = ElementReader::from_path("input.osm.pbf")?;
reader.for_each(|element| {
    if let Element::Way(way) = element {
        println!("Way {} has {} refs", way.id(), way.refs().count());
    }
})?;

As a CLI

cargo install pbfhogg-cli

# Inspect a PBF file
pbfhogg inspect denmark.osm.pbf

# Extract a region
pbfhogg extract denmark.osm.pbf -o copenhagen.osm.pbf -b 12.4,55.6,12.7,55.8

# Apply a daily diff
pbfhogg apply-changes denmark.osm.pbf changes.osc.gz -o updated.osm.pbf

Features

Read PBF files sequentially, in parallel, or with a 3-stage pipelined decoder
Write valid PBF files with dense node packing, delta encoding, and configurable compression
Blob passthrough - unmodified blobs are copied as raw bytes, no decompression needed
Blob indexdata - element type, ID range, and spatial bbox embedded per blob for fast filtering
25+ CLI commands - inspect, sort, extract, merge, diff, tags-filter, getid, and more
Cross-validated against osmium on all commands

Next Steps

Reading PBF Files - ElementReader API, read modes, blob filtering
Writing PBF Files - BlockBuilder, PbfWriter, compression options
Indexdata - what it is, how to generate it, which commands use it
Performance - benchmarks, optimization tips, planet-scale considerations

Getting Started ​

What is pbfhogg? ​

Quick Start ​

As a library ​

As a CLI ​

Features ​