GP widget does not accept Multivalue parameter, but job thru REST does...why? syntax?

Question

I have a GP widget that allows a user to select data layers to be clipped and zipped to a particular extent, in my case, by county. I can successfully have this GP service run if i submit the job through the REST endpoint. I have to submit my layers with the following syntax for my 'layers_to_clip' parameter: ['Layer1','Layer2']. The parameter that selects the county, based on an input list, passes fine.

When I try to run the GP service in Flex through the GP widget, it returns an error. My config file has multivalue:string (something I found the hard way) with a choicelist of layers. When I select more than one layer in my Flex widget interface, I get the error "Problem esriJobFailed Failed." message.

The messages XML in the failed job folder has the Layers_to_Clip input parameter as follows: "Layers to Clip: Dataset 'Layer1';'Layer2' does not exist or is not supported". which leads me to believe that the Flex GP widget does not use the correct syntax to pass a multivalue string list. Can anyone confirm this? How can I get around this?

FWIW, I can get the widget to 'work' if I only select one layer from  my list. I say 'work' in quotes since I still cannot see/save my output ZIP file. But I will tackle that issue when I can successfully select more than one layer to download.

Charlene

C_EHoward · Answer

Thanks for the code. I got it to work in 10.....have not attempted at 10.1 yet. I had to move onto other things, but I will be revisiting this, so they better make sure all available parameters in 10 are there in 10.1. I am not holding my breath however since it usually takes users trying to do their work to expose shortcomings

NeoGeo · Answer

Here is a working example using a multivalue parameter with Flex and AGS 10.0 (just the applicable code shown). Layoutelements is the multivalue parameter. I have not been able to get it to function under 10.1 because as far as I can tell the only way to create a service now is to run it from the Desktop, but the Desktop won't allow entry of a multivalue parameter (at least it won't for me because it just grays out the add value button, so if you figure out a workaround for that, let me know.) Here is the Flex portion: private var printUtil:PrintUtil; printUtil = new PrintUtil(map); printUtil.LayoutElements = [title,author,locateCoordinateString]; var params:Object = printUtil.getPrintParameters(); exportMapGP.submitJob(params); Here is the Python portion. #Create a dictionary with the element name and element value elemSettings = params.get_layoutelements() i = 0 dictionary = dict({}) for subnode in elementNode: elemName = subnode.attrib["name"] elemValue = elemSettings.getRow(i) elemValue = elemValue[1:] elemValue = elemValue[:-1] elemValue = elemValue.replace("*"," ") i = i + 1 logging.info(elemName + ": " + elemValue) if elemValue: dictionary[elemName] = elemValue logging.info(elemName + ": " + elemValue)