Windshaft-cartodb/docs/quickstart.md

## Quickstart

You can create two types of maps with the Maps API:

- **Anonymous maps**  
  You can create maps using your CartoDB public data. Any client can change the read-only SQL and CartoCSS parameters that generate the map tiles. These maps can be created from a JavaScript application alone and no authenticated calls are needed. See [this CartoDB.js example]({{ '/cartodb-platform/cartodb-js.html' | prepend: site.baseurl }}).

- **Named maps**  
  There are also maps that have access to your private data. These maps require an owner to setup and modify any SQL and CartoCSS parameters and are not modifiable without new setup calls.

### Anonymous maps

Here is an example of how to create an anonymous map with JavaScript:

```javascript
var mapconfig = {
  "version": "1.3.1",
  "layers": [{
    "type": "cartodb",
    "options": {
      "cartocss_version": "2.1.1",
      "cartocss": "#layer { polygon-fill: #FFF; }",
      "sql": "select * from european_countries_e"
    }
  }]
}

$.ajax({
  crossOrigin: true,
  type: 'POST',
  dataType: 'json',
  contentType: 'application/json',
  url: 'https://documentation.cartodb.com/api/v1/map',
  data: JSON.stringify(mapconfig),
  success: function(data) {
    var templateUrl = 'https://documentation.cartodb.com/api/v1/map/' + data.layergroupid + '/{z}/{x}/{y}.png'
    console.log(templateUrl);
  }
})
```

### Named maps

Let's create a named map using some private tables in a CartoDB account.
The following map config sets up a map of European countries that have a white fill color:

```javascript
{
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "name": "test",
  "auth": {
    "method": "open"
  },
  "layergroup": {
    "layers": [{
      "type": "mapnik",
      "options": {
        "cartocss_version": "2.1.1",
        "cartocss": "#layer { polygon-fill: #FFF; }",
        "sql": "select * from european_countries_e"
      }
    }]
  }
}
```

The map config needs to be sent to CartoDB's Map API using an authenticated call. Here we will use a command line tool called `curl`. For more info about this tool, see [this blog post](http://quickleft.com/blog/command-line-tutorials-curl), or type ``man curl`` in bash. Using `curl`, and storing the config from above in a file `mapconfig.json`, the call would look like:

<div class="code-title notitle code-request"></div>
```bash
curl 'https://{account}.cartodb.com/api/v1/map/named?api_key=APIKEY' -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d @mapconfig.json
```

To get the `URL` to fetch the tiles you need to instantiate the map, where `template_id` is the template name from the previous response.

<div class="code-title notitle code-request"></div>
```bash
curl -X POST 'https://{account}.cartodb.com/api/v1/map/named/:template_id' -H 'Content-Type: application/json'
```

The response will return JSON with properties for the `layergroupid`, the timestamp (`last_updated`) of the last data modification and some key/value pairs with `metadata` for the `layers`.
Note: all `layers` in `metadata` will always have a `type` string and a `meta` dictionary with the key/value pairs.

Here is an example response:

```javascript
{
  "layergroupid": "c01a54877c62831bb51720263f91fb33:0",
  "last_updated": "1970-01-01T00:00:00.000Z",
  "metadata": {
    "layers": [
      {
        "type": "mapnik",
        "meta": {}
      }
    ]
  }
}
```

You can use the `layergroupid` to instantiate a URL template for accessing tiles on the client. Here we use the `layergroupid` from the example response above in this URL template:

```bash
https://documentation.cartodb.com/api/v1/map/c01a54877c62831bb51720263f91fb33:0/{z}/{x}/{y}.png
```