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Turning off editing field by field?

MatthewStull1

I have a hosted feature layer with 24 fields in it. I want to turn off editing on all of the fields except one. Do I really need to go one at a time and turn off the editing field by field for the other 23? I'm doing this in the "Data" tab "Fields" view of my layer's information page. Is there a quicker way to do this? If not, that is not great. Is there a way for me to easily turn off field by field editing in the Map Viewer (I don't think there is)? Anyway, if I do have to go field by field and turn off editing, that's not great and I will submit that as an enhancement idea.

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Accepted answers

EmilyGeo

Hi @MatthewStull1,

You can create a form in Map Viewer and select which fields you want folks to edit by dragging and dropping them on to the canvas. In your case, you can simply add 1 field to the form. This will present folks with the 1 editable field in the form which is very handy if they are used to editing using that workflow. Note that it does not affect editability of the other fields in other places- like the Data tab you mentioned.

All comments

dougbrowning

Note this does not stop them from just using the attribute table in the map (which is what most of our users do). They can get around all of it in Pro also.

Safest way is a view as listed below.

dougbrowning

I also updated your script to have it turn whole layers off in one config line and a list per layer telling only which fields to turn ON. That was my use case. Does it in a single call also.

Works slick! Did 37 layers 4,000 fields in a few mins. Thanks!

# --- Configuration ------------------------------------------------------------
VIEW_ITEM_ID = "View Item ID"  # your view item id

# Turn OFF editing for ALL fields for these layer/table IDs (one call per layer/table).
FULLY_DISABLE_LAYER_IDS = [2,3,4]

# For these layer/table IDs, leave editing ON only for the listed fields.
# All other currently-editable fields will be turned OFF in a single call.
# 0 is Points and 1 is Field Visits
ALLOW_EDIT_FIELDS_BY_LAYER = {
    # Example:
    0: ["StreamName", "OfficeEvaluator"],
    1: ["ReasonNotSampled", "PDFgenerate"],
}

# Optional: For layers in this list, leave *only* GLOBAL_ALLOWED_FIELDS editable.
# (This preserves your original behavior where some layers keep a short allowlist.)
EDIT_DATASET_IDX_LIST = []  # e.g., layer 0 uses the global allowlist

GLOBAL_ALLOWED_FIELDS = []

# Behavior controls
CASE_SENSITIVE_FIELD_MATCH = False  # False means case-insensitive matching by field name
DRY_RUN = False                     # True = print intended changes, do NOT call update_definition

# --- Script -------------------------------------------------------------------
from arcgis.gis import GIS
from arcgis.features import FeatureLayerCollection

def norm(name: str) -> str:
    return name if CASE_SENSITIVE_FIELD_MATCH else name.lower()

# Connect to the view item and get the layer collection
gis = GIS("Pro")
view_item = gis.content.get(VIEW_ITEM_ID)
if view_item is None:
    raise Exception(f"View item not found: {VIEW_ITEM_ID}")
view_flc = FeatureLayerCollection.fromitem(view_item)

# Iterate through layers and tables
view_datasets = (view_flc.layers or []) + (view_flc.tables or [])

for ds in view_datasets:
    ds_props = ds.properties
    ds_id = ds_props.get("id")
    ds_name = ds_props.get("name", f"id:{ds_id}")
    fields = ds_props.get("fields", [])
    mgr = ds.manager

    # Decide the mode for this dataset
    # 1) Full disable list wins
    if ds_id in FULLY_DISABLE_LAYER_IDS:
        updates = []
        for f in fields:
            # Only touch fields that are currently editable
            if f.get("editable", False):
                updates.append({"name": f["name"], "editable": False})

        if updates:
            payload = {"fields": updates}
            if DRY_RUN:
                print(f"[DRY RUN] {ds_name} (id={ds_id}) -> disable ALL editable fields ({len(updates)}).")
            else:
                mgr.update_definition(payload)
                print(f"{ds_name} (id={ds_id}) -> disabled {len(updates)} editable fields in one call.")
        else:
            print(f"{ds_name} (id={ds_id}) -> no changes (no fields marked editable).")
        continue  # Done with this dataset

    # 2) Allow-only list per layer
    allow_only = None
    if ds_id in ALLOW_EDIT_FIELDS_BY_LAYER:
        allow_only = set(norm(n) for n in ALLOW_EDIT_FIELDS_BY_LAYER[ds_id])

    # 3) If not per-layer allowlist, check if this dataset is in your classic list
    #    that should keep only GLOBAL_ALLOWED_FIELDS editable.
    elif ds_id in EDIT_DATASET_IDX_LIST:
        allow_only = set(norm(n) for n in GLOBAL_ALLOWED_FIELDS)

    updates = []
    if allow_only is not None:
        # Turn OFF any editable field that is NOT in the allowlist.
        for f in fields:
            if not f.get("editable", False):
                continue
            if norm(f["name"]) in allow_only:
                # Leave it editable; no change required.
                continue
            updates.append({"name": f["name"], "editable": False})

    else:
        # Default behavior: if the dataset is not in any configured list,
        # do NOT change anything. If you prefer the old behavior (disable all),
        # uncomment the following to disable all editable fields by default:
        #
        # for f in fields:
        #     if f.get("editable", False):
        #         updates.append({"name": f["name"], "editable": False})
        pass

    # Apply (in one call) if there are updates
    if updates:
        payload = {"fields": updates}
        if DRY_RUN:
            print(f"[DRY RUN] {ds_name} (id={ds_id}) -> disable {len(updates)} fields not in allowlist.")
        else:
            mgr.update_definition(payload)
            print(f"{ds_name} (id={ds_id}) -> disabled {len(updates)} fields in one call.")
    else:
        print(f"{ds_name} (id={ds_id}) -> no changes required.")

print("Finished.")

dougbrowning

@MobiusSnake This is great was just looking at this today thinking how am I going to turn off 4,000+ fields.

I wish we could turn off whole layers like you can for geometry.

Right here I can turn off all geo why can't I also turn off all editing using a layer list vs forcing me to do each and every field. Not very scalable here.

Is there any setting at the layer level or is it field only?

thanks

MatthewStull1

Thank you, that worked great!

MobiusSnake

I usually script this type of thing up if it's something I'm doing more than once - particularly when I have a hosted feature layer with a large number of views hanging off of it, and I need to modify all of the views. Below is an example of code where I disable editing on all fields except two named lifecycle_status and review_notes. I modify the two constants at the top for the view's Item ID and the layer/table indices that should be editable.

There are a couple improvements that could be made to this; the field property updates could be bundled together into a single call to update_definition, that would make it quicker, and the field names that remain editable could be put into a list at the top of the code rather than being hardcoded in the middle.

VIEW_ITEM_ID = "your_item_id_here"
EDIT_DATASET_IDX_LIST = [0]

from arcgis.gis import GIS
from arcgis.features import FeatureLayerCollection

# Connect to the view.
gis = GIS("home")
content = gis.content
view_item = content.get(VIEW_ITEM_ID)
if view_item is None:
    raise Exception("View item not found.")
view_flc = FeatureLayerCollection.fromitem(view_item)

# Iterate through each of the layers and tables.
view_datasets = view_flc.layers + view_flc.tables
for view_dataset in view_datasets:
    # Determine whether we want any editable fields.
    view_dataset_idx = view_dataset.properties["id"]
    dataset_editable = view_dataset_idx in EDIT_DATASET_IDX_LIST
    
    # Iterate through the fields, updating those that are editable and not related to approval.
    view_dataset_manager = view_dataset.manager
    for field_def in view_dataset.properties["fields"]:
        if not field_def["editable"]:
            continue
        if dataset_editable and "lifecycle_status" in field_def["name"]:
            continue
        if dataset_editable and "review_notes" in field_def["name"]:
            continue
        
        # Put together a dictionary for the manager update call.
        def_update = {
            "fields": [
                {
                    "name": field_def["name"],
                    "editable": False
                }
            ]
        }
        view_dataset_manager.update_definition(def_update)

print("Finished.")

EmilyGeo

Hi @MatthewStull1,

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