Updates:

July 2016: refactored and moved to github here

August 2015: check also “scaled”- based fast SVG rendering on top of Leaflet here it might be surprising in performance on Chrome.

May 2015: Geojson-vt sample here is using Canvas overlay as well

June 2014: WebGL sample drawing 86T points using this canvasOverlay available here.

Leaflet full view Canvas Overlay  is a straightforward full screen canvas overlay class (L.CanvasOverlay.js) that calls custom user function for drawing. Available here: http://bl.ocks.org/sumbera/11114288

For inspiration I have used Leaflet.heat and extracted generic Canvas drawing class that is not tight to data or processing but rather call user defined function. (I am still thinking in iOS view delegates and it make sense to apply it here too).

You can use L.CanvasOverlay.js for you custom drawing in your Leaflet map. The sample is using 24T points available here: http://www.sumbera.com/gist/data.js

Usage example of the demo here:

    //Example:
    L.canvasOverlay()
       .params({data: points})     // optional add any custom data that will be passed to draw function
           .drawing(drawingOnCanvas)   // set drawing function
           .addTo(leafletMap);         // add this layer to leaflet map


    //Custom drawing function:
        function drawingOnCanvas(canvasOverlay, params) {
                var ctx = params.canvas.getContext('2d');
                params.options.data.map(function (d, i) {
                  // canvas drawing goes here
                });
            };

    // parameters passed to custom draw function :
     {
                                canvas   : <canvas>,
                                bounds   : <bounds in WGS84>
                                size     : <view size>,
                                zoomScale: <zoom scale is  1/resolution>,
                                zoom     : <current zoom>,
                                options  : <options passed >
             };

Other useful full view Leaflet Canvas sources here:

– leaflet.heat https://github.com/Leaflet/Leaflet.heat
– Full Canvas https://github.com/cyrilcherian/Leaflet-Fullcanvas
– CartoDb Leaflet.Canvas : https://github.com/CartoDB/Leaflet.CanvasLayer