Geopolitical Views

The HERE Vector Tile API provides the pviews endpoint that you can use to retrieve the available geopolitical views of the map. To request the list of geopolitical views available for a map, use the pviews endpoint.

When you make a pviews request, the response is similar to the example below.

{
    "base": [
      "cn",
      "ar"
    ]
}

You can store the list of geopolitical views in your client application. You must refresh this value every 24 hours.

Please, check the Boundaries and Places description of the layers to get detailed information about it.

You can utilize these views to display the map with boundaries and labels based on either international or local country perspectives. Generally, the international view is used unless the map is intended for a specific country that has its own local view. If the renderer specifies a value for kind:xx, where xx represents one of the available geopolitical views and data is available for that view, the boundaries and labels of the selected country view will be displayed. Otherwise, the default boundaries and labels will be shown.

A common scenario arises when a particular area of the world is disputed by multiple countries or not recognized by certain countries as an independent state or part of another country. As a result, each country portrays that area as part of itself and displays or restricts certain labels accordingly. When requesting a specific tile with the geopolitical view of country A, the response will depict the area as belonging to country A. Similarly, when requesting the tile with the geopolitical view of country B, the response will indicate that the area belongs to country B.

For example, a user wants to see a certain location in South Patagonia.

The data for that tile contains the following for boundaries:

"properties": {
    "$layer": "boundaries",
    "$zoom": 5,
    "$id": 0,
    "kind": "country",
    "kind_detail": 2,
    "sort_rank": 262,
    "min_zoom": 1,
    "kind:ar": "unrecognized_country"
}
(...)
"properties": {
        "$layer": "boundaries",
        "$zoom": 5,
        "$id": 0,
        "kind": "disputed",
        "kind_detail": 2,
        "sort_rank": 261,
        "min_zoom": 1,
        "kind:ar": "unrecognized_disputed"
    }

Which means, that these boundaries are disputed by the geopolitical view kind:ar for Argentina. By default, if the renderer does not take this into account, it shows the default view (international view) with a dashed border showing the South Patagonian Ice Field between Chile and Argentina.

If you would use the Argentinian view, kind:ar, of the same tile, it would show a solid border representing Argentina's view on the ice field.

Another example is the country label for Cyprus. The label has different representations, depending on the selected political view:

Default

"properties": {
    "name:sq": "Qipro",
    "name:ko": "키프러스",
    "name": "Κύπρος",
    ...
    "kind": "country",
    "kind:tr": "unrecognized_country",
    "kind:nt": "unrecognized_country",
    "kind:cy": "unrecognized_country",
    "iso_code": "CY",
    "min_zoom": 5
}

Cyprus

"properties": {
    "name:sq": "Qipro",
    "name:ko": "키프러스",
    "name": "Κύπρος",
    ...
    "kind:cy": "country",
    "iso_code": "CY",
    "min_zoom": 5
}

Turkish

"properties": {
    "name:tr": "Güney Kıbrıs Rum Yönetimi",
    "name:en": "Greek Cypriot Administration",
    "name": "Güney Kıbrıs Rum Yönetimi",
    "kind:tr": "country",
    "iso_code": "CY",
    "min_zoom": 5
}

North Cyprus Republic

"properties": {
    "name:tr": "Güney Kıbrıs Rum Yönetimi",
    "name:en": "Greek Cypriot Administration",
    "name": "Güney Kıbrıs Rum Yönetimi",
    "kind:nt": "country",
    "iso_code": "CY",
    "min_zoom": 5
}