Retrieving symbology info from ArcMap document (.mxd)

HannahBernal

Hello,

I wish to retrieve symbology information from a mxd file I created from ArcMap 10.6.2 using the ArcGIS Pro API. Since I want to do this when the Pro application is not running, I cannot access the classes or interfaces under the ArcGIS.Desktop namespace.

Arc objects equivalent to what is needed would be the IMapDocument and IMapReader objects that allowed a map object to be created from the the mxd file path that has symbology information for every feature layer.

Would it be possible to retrieve this kind of information from the mxd file, or would the mxd file need to be converted to another type of file to be useable outside of Pro? From what I've researched so far, the .mapx file seems to have the symbology info I'm looking for. If it's possible to convert mxd to mapx, how would the mapx file be parsed through to get and save its symbology?

Thank you in advance,

Hannah

KirkKuykendall1

Do you have access to the ArcObjects SDK?

If so, it might be easier to write an ArcObjects app that translates renderers, symbols etc. from ArcObjects into CIM objects.  Esri seems to be using CIM as the common foundation across all apps - except for Arcmap.

All CIM objects can be serialized to json.  A symbology translator could read from mxds (using ArcObjects) and write json files (using ArcGIS.Core.CIM).  You could then have a Pro Addin to deserialize the json to display it in Pro.  I suspect it would take a lot of tweaking to make it look right.

In the code below I created a new ArcObjects console app, changed the target framework to 4.8, and added a reference to C:\Program Files\ArcGIS\Pro\bin\ArcGIS.Core.dll, which fortunately is compatible with 32 bit.

 

using ESRI.ArcGIS.esriSystem;
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using ArcGIS.Core.CIM;
using System.Diagnostics;

namespace ArcObjectsConsoleApplication1
{
    class Program
    {
        private static LicenseInitializer m_AOLicenseInitializer = 
            new ArcObjectsConsoleApplication1.LicenseInitializer();

        [STAThread()]
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            //ESRI License Initializer generated code.
            m_AOLicenseInitializer.InitializeApplication(
                new esriLicenseProductCode[] 
                { 
                    esriLicenseProductCode.esriLicenseProductCodeAdvanced 
                },
                new esriLicenseExtensionCode[] { }
                );
            // todo: open mxd and read ISymbol stuff...

            //todo: populate CIM objects using ArcObjects ISymbol stuff.
            var renderer = new CIMSimpleRenderer()
            {
                Patch = PatchShape.Default,
                Symbol = new CIMSymbolReference()
                {
                    Symbol = new CIMPointSymbol()
                }
            };
            // serialize out to a file...
            Debug.Print(renderer.ToJson());

            //ESRI License Initializer generated code.
            //Do not make any call to ArcObjects after ShutDownApplication()
            m_AOLicenseInitializer.ShutdownApplication();
        }
    }
}

 

 

Output: 

 

{
  "type": "CIMSimpleRenderer",
  "patch": "Default",
  "symbol": {
    "type": "CIMSymbolReference",
    "symbol": {
      "type": "CIMPointSymbol",
      "haloSize": 1,
      "scaleX": 1,
      "angleAlignment": "Display"
    }
  }
}