HTML Popup definition

Question

I am curious to know whether or not it is possible to copy the HTML popup customizations I have made for one layer to many layers that represent the same geography.

I have a cadastral dataset where I have "customized" the HTML popup to the way I like it.  It was a bit of an arduous process - and now that I am happy with it, I would like to apply the customized HTML popup to other cadastral datasets that have the similar attribute definitions as the original.

thanks

MattSayler · Answer

I THINK it can be done. You'd set it up to look for fields with certain names and then display the alias you want to use. This is code I added to a modified version of the default popup xsl. It checks if the field name matches one of two names, checks if the field value is a number, and finally will display alternate text for the field name and format a link to a file path (it's not able to check if the file actually exists though). Actually, I make it display two entries instead of one, since the file could exist in a couple different locations. Original WO DWG (if exists) file:\Engineering\Drawings\Const Drawings\.dwg

As-Built PDF (if exists) file:\Engineering\Drawings\Const Drawings\ASBUILTS\.pdf

I've applied the xsl to several of our feature classes as many have the 'Original WO' and 'Last WO'. If a feature class doesn't have either of those fields, it just ignores that section of the code. You could do a similar sort of thing. Look for fieldName = 'x', and then display the name you want instead of 'x'. It's ultimately html, so you might even be able to invoke some javascript. I haven't done much of that though and am not certain what would work and what wouldn't. The popups run in an embedded browser that seems to have some limitations in my experience. I messed around with using jQuery instead of CSS to format stuff; some things worked ok, some things didn't.

CamKenny · Answer

Thanks for the info.  It looks as though you can do quite a bit with XSL Templates.

What it does appear though, and based on my situation, is that I need a way to set the alias for the field names I want to show up in the HTML popup.  Not sure if this can/is done through the XSL template, but rather through some other process?

MattSayler · Answer

Ok, so you're using one of the out of the box pop up options. You could probably make a custom one that does what you want, but you'll have to brave working with XSLT.

XSLT is used to transform xml from one schema to another, often xml to html. It's composed of an xsl file which contains instructions for performing the transformation from the source xml to the output xml.

The way html popups work, in a nutshell, is ArcMap produces an xml document based on the layer settings (i.e only the fields checked on the 'fields' tab show up). That xml is converted to html using an xsl. That's what you see when you get the popup. ArcGIS has a few out of the box xsl files, and that's what those default options make use of.

I'm definitely no expert, but I've learned some basics. w3schools.com has some decent tutorials to lay down some foundation concepts. If you're not already familiar with xml or html, the whole prospect can be intimidating though.