topic Re: Problem accessing custom text elements in my print service in ArcGIS Enterprise Questions

Problem accessing custom text elements in my print service

TracySchloss — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 19:53:40 GMT

I created a copy of the basic exportmaptemplates to make my own custom layout. I needed to add both subtitles and descriptive text to my layout. I added two new text elements and gave them element names of subTitleText and descripText. Just to have something to see on my map, because I'm going to change these programmatically, I've given them a text value the same as the element name.

I didn't receive any errors when I published this print service, so I'm thinking the service itself is OK? I'm having some problems with the syntax of referencing these new elements.

I'm using the JS API, and in Firebug, I can see the call getting made to the print service. It includes the custom text elements by their element names, with the values that got assigned in my code. I am getting an error in my JS code, but if I copy/paste the string that's getting submitted to the print URL, it does generate output. It just doesn't include the new values I'm assigning for subTitleText and descripText. It's still just the default string I put in as a placeholder.

 {"mapOptions":{"showAttribution":true,"extent":{"xmin":-10391169.27082235,"ymin":4469925.719133955,"xmax":-10383726.21519309,"ymax":4476250.883224546,"spatialReference":{"wkid":102100}},"spatialReference":{"wkid":102100},"scale":36111.90964300888},"operationalLayers":[{"id":"streetMap","title":"streetMap","opacity":1,"minScale":591657527.591555,"maxScale":1128.497176,"url":"http://server.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/World_Street_Map/MapServer"},{"id":"countyLayer","title":"countyLayer","opacity":1,"minScale":0,"maxScale":0,"url":"https://ogitest.oa.mo.gov/ArcGIS/rest/services/BaseMap/county_simple/MapServer","visibleLayers":null,"layers":[]},{"id":"status_stateOwnParcelLayer","title":"status_stateOwnParcelLayer","opacity":1,"minScale":0,"maxScale":0,"url":"https://ogitest.oa.mo.gov/ArcGIS/rest/services/StateOwnedParcels/MapServer","visibleLayers":null,"layers":[]},{"id":"allParcelLayer","title":"allParcelLayer","opacity":1,"minScale":0,"maxScale":0,"url":"https://ogitest.oa.mo.gov/ArcGIS/rest/services/allParcels/MapServer","visibleLayers":null,"layers":[]},{"id":"stateOwnFeaturelayer","url":"https://ogitest.oa.mo.gov/ArcGIS/rest/services/StateOwnedParcels/MapServer/1","title":"stateOwnFeaturelayer","minScale":1155581,"maxScale":0,"layerDefinition":{"drawingInfo":{"renderer":{"type":"simple","label":"","description":"","symbol":{"color":[255,211,127,255],"outline":{"color":[110,110,110,255],"width":0.4,"type":"esriSLS","style":"esriSLSSolid"},"type":"esriSFS","style":"esriSFSSolid"}}}}},{"id":"mapDiv_graphics","minScale":0,"maxScale":0,"featureCollection":{"layers":[{"layerDefinition":{"name":"polygonLayer","geometryType":"esriGeometryPolygon"},"featureSet":{"geometryType":"esriGeometryPolygon","features":[{"geometry":{"rings":[[[-10387278.9405581,4472649.14459539],[-10387279.6215167,4472629.95429174],[-10387325.6367082,4472631.12368592],[-10387325.6625458,4472633.30616325],[-10387325.8529157,4472641.81899572],[-10387325.6180643,4472650.3308426],[-10387278.9405581,4472649.14459539]]],"spatialReference":{"wkid":102100}},"symbol":{"color":[33,237,254,13],"outline":{"color":[33,237,254,255],"width":2.25,"type":"esriSLS","style":"esriSLSSolid"},"type":"esriSFS","style":"esriSFSSolid"}}]}}]}}],"exportOptions":{"outputSize":[800,1100],"dpi":96},"layoutOptions":{"titleText":"just something","customTextElements":{"descripText":"BEG 192.1 FT S SE COR KANSAS & KEARNEY STS S 50 FT E 160 FT N 50 FT W TO BEG11/29/22 (EX W 20 FT)","subTitleText":" 2331 N KANSAS AVE"},"scaleBarOptions":{"metricUnit":"Kilometers","metricLabel":"km","nonMetricUnit":"Miles","nonMetricLabel":"mi"},"legendOptions":{"operationalLayers":[]}}}

Am I misunderstanding how to include these custom text elements? Should they not be nested within the layoutOptions the way I have them? Sorry about the big long JSON string, that's just the way it came out when I copied from Firebug.

Re: Problem accessing custom text elements in my print service

AlexeyTereshenkov — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 20:36:31 GMT

Tracy, can't comment anything on that right now, but I had some issues with printing a legend with the PrintingTools service in 10.1 myself and all the problems I had were solved with the SP1. Have you installed the one?

Re: Problem accessing custom text elements in my print service

TracySchloss — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 16:03:44 GMT

I don't know what else might have been fixed in SP1, but it is installed.

Re: Problem accessing custom text elements in my print service

TanuHoque — Sat, 11 Dec 2021 19:54:27 GMT

Tracy,
Custom text elements need to be defined as separate objects, then they need to be put in an array before assigning that array to the layoutOptions.customTextElements property.
http://developers.arcgis.com/en/javascript/jsapi/printtemplate.html#layoutoptions

here is a snippet of how JS code should look like:

template.layoutOptions = {
  titleText: "just something",
  customTextElements: [
    { "descripText": "BEG 192.1 FT S SE COR KANSAS & KEARNEY STS S 50 FT E 160 FT N 50 FT W TO BEG11/29/22 (EX W 20 FT" },
    { "subTitleText": " 2331 N KANSAS AVE" }
  ]
};

here is the equivalent JSON gets sent to a Printing service:

"layoutOptions": {
  "titleText": "just something",
  "customTextElements": [
    {
      "descripText": "BEG 192.1 FT S SE COR KANSAS & KEARNEY STS S 50 FT E 160 FT N 50 FT W TO BEG11/29/22 (EX W 20 FT)"
    },
    {
      "subTitleText": " 2331 N KANSAS AVE"
    }
  ]
}

hope this helps.

Re: Problem accessing custom text elements in my print service

TracySchloss — Sat, 11 Dec 2021 19:54:29 GMT

That's how I have it, except that I have a little punctuation problem. I'm trying to update the customTextElements in onPrintStart, right before the print is submitted. When I do, I end up generating

"layoutOptions":{"titleText":"my map title",
"customTextElements":[
{"legalDescriptionText":"BEG 82.5 FT E NE COR BENTON & WALNUT STS E 82.5 FT N 267 FT W 82.5 FT S TO BEG"},
{"subTitleText":" E WALNUT ST"}]

I'm having a real hard time spotting the typo, but I think I'm missing an ending curly brace to close out value of layoutOptions. Since I'm defining this programmatically, I haven't found the line yet where I can correct this. I have posting on the JS forum too. I'm still trying to decide if my service is OK. I'm having a really hard time testing it without programming something.

I found a posting to modify the template to dynamically alter the title, so the user could enter what they wanted. This added the line

this.templates.layoutOptions.titleText = printTitle;

Then I wanted to go back and also add customTextElements. I ended up with:

        dojo.connect(printer, "onPrintStart", function(){
//console.log("onPrintStart: fullLegalString = " + fullLegalString + "print_subTitle = " + print_subTitle);
            var printTitle = dojo.byId("txtTitle").value;
                for (var i = 0; i < templates.length; i++) {
                   this.templates.layoutOptions.titleText = printTitle;
                 this.templates.layoutOptions.customTextElements =[
                        {"legalDescriptionText": fullLegalString}, 
                        {"subTitleText": print_subTitle} ];  
                }
        });

Maybe instead of trying to define titleText and customTextElements separately, I should try defining the entire layoutOptions and concatenate it all together somehow. Otherwise I'm still chasing down a curly brace (I think ...)

Re: Problem accessing custom text elements in my print service

TanuHoque — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 16:54:55 GMT

I'm having a real hard time spotting the typo, but I think I'm missing an ending curly brace to close out value of layoutOptions.

I'm not an expert in JS, but i thought you'd have got an run-time error if you had any missing ending curly braces. I'm not sure which IDE you are using to write JS code. But as you know you can search the web with "Javascript lint" and use one of those online lint apps to find those syntactical errors.

And as always, as you did in the other case, you can use

console.log(this.templates.layoutOptions)

to make sure that object looks good.

I'm still trying to decide if my service is OK. I'm having a really hard time testing it without programming something.

in order to find out whether you service is ok, you can go to the REST end point of your printing service's task, paste the JSON generated by your app (if you need to fix the missing braces or something like that, fix it, you use some sites like jsonlint.org to check the validity of the json) in ExportWebMap_As_JSON text box, specify the name of the Layout Template and click Execute.

One thing that I noticed (not a bug or error) is that in your code, you are updating layoutOptions for all templates! do you need
to do that? If I'm not mistaken, I think you should update layoutOptions only for the selected template, not all.

Re: Problem accessing custom text elements in my print service

TracySchloss — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 18:12:43 GMT

Yes I mean to have the same custom text elements for both templates. I don't have this fully populated because I'm just working on a landscape printout, but I'll need a Portrait equivalent with the exact same content. The user will have to determine which orientation works best for the particular screen content.

I switched my print service from Asynchronous to Synchronous and that seems to have made the difference. (Although I still think it's gremlins.) In the instructions for authoring it suggested you can use either for your Execution Method. I didn't find that was the case!

Re: Problem accessing custom text elements in my print service

TanuHoque — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 18:36:08 GMT

I switched my print service from Asynchronous to Synchronous and that seems to have made the difference. (Although I still think it's gremlins.) In the instructions for authoring it suggested you can use either for your Execution Method. I didn't find that was the case!

Hmm... that shouldn't make any difference. You should use async only when you think it may take longer to generate output.
I'd recommend you to contact Esri Tech Support to submit an incident and have them check why async vs sync makes all the difference in your case.

Thanks.

Re: Problem accessing custom text elements in my print service

TracySchloss — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 19:09:29 GMT

I had an open ticket with them, but the choice of synchronous vs. asychronous wasn't suggested as a cause to my problem.

Re: Problem accessing custom text elements in my print service

TracySchloss — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 19:30:12 GMT

I was told by ESRI that 'it shouldn't matter whether my print service was defined as synchronous or asynchronous'. However, when I change my service to be synchronous, it started working for me.

Re: Problem accessing custom text elements in my print service

MichaelVolz — Thu, 05 Jun 2014 11:56:57 GMT

Tracy:

For the web app you were building, were the items descripText and subTitleText being entered by the user at run-time just before the print is being created (maybe with text boxes or the HTML5/Javascript equivalent)?

Have you tried using customTextElements to place a selected records data from a query onto the print template?

Re: Problem accessing custom text elements in my print service

TracySchloss — Thu, 05 Jun 2014 12:32:57 GMT

In my final solution, I had all those elements incorporated. The user has the opportunity to enter in a title and subtitle. If they don't, I have default strings based on some variables I declared earlier, like the name of the county.

Generally the workflow is that the user has identified a particular feature, and details about it is what they want to appear in a printout. I'm storing several variables from that task initially. If they choose to enter their own title/subtitle, those will be used instead of the variables I've stored. For the custom text, I'm pulling data from multiple attributes and concatenating them into a single string. That's what I'm using to populate the customTextElement that I'd previous defined in my custom print template.

Re: Problem accessing custom text elements in my print service

MichaelVolz — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 19:03:06 GMT

Tracy:

From what I've read and experimented with, it seems that the customTextElements are set at start-up when the application is reading through the available print templates in the print service. Since the enduser has not set the information for the customTextElements yet, do you need to trap the exportwebmap_as_json before it goes to the print service so you can substitute the customTextElements set at start-up with the variables that the user has defined in the application since start-up?

I setup the customTextElement to read the value from a textbox where the user enters a value, but the print template was always only using the default value for this textbox that is available at start-up.