topic Enabling editing for bulk published feature services in ArcGIS Enterprise Questions

Enabling editing for bulk published feature services

tigerwoulds — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 20:04:09 GMT

We are running ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8.1. I followed this doc here to bulk publish around 50 feature services: Publish layers in bulk from a user-managed data store—Portal for ArcGIS | Documentation for ArcGIS Enterprise

As the doc states, editing is not enabled by default. Is there a way (either through Portal/Server Manager or using Python) to go into the service properties and enable editing?

Re: Enabling editing for bulk published feature services

IhabHassan — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 22:43:32 GMT

Hi @tigerwoulds

I was able to enable editing for bulk service publishing using Python, by following this workflow:

- using Pro project Map, create web layer sharing draft using "getWebLayerSharingDraft" function
- configure the sharing draft as required, like the federated server URL, copy data to server or not, according to your needs
- export the draft to a file using "exportToSDDraft" function
- edit the exported file to enable editing then save the file
- stage the service using "StageService_server" function
- publish the service using "UploadServiceDefinition_server" function

I am attaching the function that can help editing the service draft file.
Hope that helps in what you are after

Regards
Ihab

Re: Enabling editing for bulk published feature services

LongDinh — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 22:45:55 GMT

Hi @tigerwoulds,

You might be able to update the definition using Python. Here are the reference notes from the developers site: https://developers.arcgis.com/python/guide/updating-feature-layer-properties/

If the the bulk publish publishes a Feature Layer but with editing disabled, I believe you search for it in portal and update the 'capabilities' property to enable create/delete/query/update. The capability definition is something like:

cap_def_update = {'capabilities':'Create,Delete,Query,Update,Editing,Extract'}

Hope this helps 😃 Good luck!

Re: Enabling editing for bulk published feature services

tigerwoulds — Thu, 23 Sep 2021 18:58:44 GMT

Thanks! Curious if this will work for non hosted services..aka service that are registered with an SDE database. The doc states you can update service properties for hosted feature layers

Re: Enabling editing for bulk published feature services

LongDinh — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 22:14:26 GMT

For Enterprise services, you could try editing the service properties through the ArcGIS Admin API. See notes on the endpoint here: https://developers.arcgis.com/rest/enterprise-administration/enterprise/edit-service.htm . I believe you are looking to enable (set true) the "typename":"FeatureServer object.

Using Python:

import requests import os import json # Get token from /arcgis/sharing/rest/generateToken token = "###" service_name="myservice" folder_name="myfoldername" domain="myarcgis.com" edit_service_url = f"https://{domain}/arcgis/admin/{folder_name}/{service_name}.MapServer/edit base_dir = r"C:/workspace" json_file = os.path.join(base_dir, r"myServiceProperties.json") with open(json_file) as jf: service_json=json.load(jf) payload = { 'f': 'json', 'service':service_json, 'token':'token } response = requests.post( edit_service_url, data=payload ) print(response.json())

Re: Enabling editing for bulk published feature services

tigerwoulds — Fri, 24 Sep 2021 20:07:18 GMT

I think I'm getting there. Still very new to python and programming in general so I appreciate the help.

I'm a little confused on what to put in the JSON file. Say I just want to have just the Query capability on the Feature service, how do I do that?

In the JSON file, do I just copy the entire map service's JSON ( from sever manager) and edit the Feature Service capabilities section?

Here is my code overall:

import requests
import os
import json

import ssl

ssl._create_default_https_context = ssl._create_unverified_context

# Get token from /arcgis/sharing/rest/generateToken
token = "####"
service_name="TestService"
folder_name="TestFolder"
domain="######################"
edit_service_url = f"https://{domain}/arcgis/admin/services/{folder_name}/{service_name}.MapServer/edit"
print (edit_service_url)
base_dir = r"C:\Test"
json_file = os.path.join(base_dir, r"myServicePropertiesX.json")

from os.path import exists

file_exists = exists(json_file)
print (file_exists)

with open(json_file) as jf:
   service_json=json.load(jf)

payload = {
   'f': 'json',
   'service':service_json,
   'token':token

}
response = requests.post(
   edit_service_url, data=payload
)

print(response.json)

Re: Enabling editing for bulk published feature services

tigerwoulds — Sat, 25 Sep 2021 01:00:24 GMT

Thanks for the reply. I dont think this will work for us me as I have several hundreds of layers to publish as individual services. Setting up the service definition file for each one is not feasible.

The bulk publishing doc I referenced is a good solution to publish these quickly, but I just need a way to update the feature service properties once the services are published.

They are all 'registered' services pulling from a SDE database so unfortunately using the update_definition() function outlined here doesnt work. Service definitions | ArcGIS Developer

Re: Enabling editing for bulk published feature services

LongDinh — Sun, 26 Sep 2021 22:54:45 GMT

I'm a little confused on what to put in the JSON file. Say I just want to have just the Query capability on the Feature service, how do I do that?

There is an "extensions" array which contains an object with a typeName == "FeatureServer". One of the object's properties is capabilities. You can add in the "Query" string to enable the capability. The structure looks something like the below:

{"extentions": [ ... ,{ "typeName": "FeatureServer", "capabilities": "Query", "enabled": "true", "maxUploadFileSize": 0, "allowedUploadFileTypes": "", "properties": {...}} ... ] }

In the JSON file, do I just copy the entire map service's JSON ( from sever manager) and edit the Feature Service capabilities section?

Yes, I believe so. The JSON file should be an updated copy of the service properties found at the edit service url. Be sure to leave a copy of the original if you want to revert your changes.

It might also be a good idea to create a service which has Query/Edit capability enabled and see the differences before posting the changes. The ESRI admin enterprise notes are detailed but are human readable.

Also note, I may have been incorrect with the payload variable. If the server returns a parameter-like error (i am guessing), try using json.dumps for the service parameter.

payload = {
   'f': 'json',
   'service':json.dumps(service_json),
   'token':token

}

Re: Enabling editing for bulk published feature services

tigerwoulds — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 14:34:25 GMT

Makes sense, thank you much!

Re: Enabling editing for bulk published feature services

tigerwoulds — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 19:32:31 GMT

I am getting this message when I run my script. But the feature service service is not updating. Any ideas?

# <bound method Response.json of <Response [200]>

Re: Enabling editing for bulk published feature services

LongDinh — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 22:13:48 GMT

I forgot parenthesises in my print statement. It is currently printing the method object and not the returned value. It should be:

print (response.json())

That means the request was successful, however, in ESRI's REST service implementation, the response from the service will return a message in JSON format. You will likely see an error property in the returned JSON.

For other status codes, you can look at this.

Re: Enabling editing for bulk published feature services

tigerwoulds — Thu, 30 Sep 2021 00:38:54 GMT

It worked like a charm, no errors. Thank you very much!

Next goal is to apply this workflow to over 100 services in a folder on Server Manager so I can make the same edits to every service within that folder. Thank you again for your help thus far.

Re: Enabling editing for bulk published feature services

tigerwoulds — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 15:45:57 GMT

Hi @LongDinh

For some reason, my script is throwing an error when submitting the POST. I am building the JSON file programmatically (since I have 100's of services), but my code sees the JSON file as invalid.

{'status': 'error', 'messages': ["A JSONObject text must begin with '{' at character 1

The JSON file is does start with the {
I have validated it using an online editor
I can copy the JSON from the file and submit it through the MapServer/edit endpoint and it is successful. Any ideas why I cant POST the JSON file?

Re: Enabling editing for bulk published feature services

LongDinh — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 22:16:43 GMT

Hi @tigerwoulds ,

The variable json_file is a path and not a JSON object hence the input parameter throws a 'does not begin with {' error.

I think your payload on line 100 should be:

payload = { 'f':'json', 'service': service_json, 'token': token }

Re: Enabling editing for bulk published feature services

tigerwoulds — Wed, 06 Oct 2021 20:30:41 GMT

Yes good catch, I missed that. Unfortunately I still get the same error

Re: Enabling editing for bulk published feature services

LongDinh — Wed, 06 Oct 2021 22:43:31 GMT

Try converting the service_json to a json string like:

payload = { 'f': 'json', 'service': json.dumps(service_json), 'token': token }

Hopefully it throws a different error.

Re: Enabling editing for bulk published feature services

tigerwoulds — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 23:43:05 GMT

@LongDinh unfortunately, same issue BUT I was able to figure this out using a slightly different method from this example. I converted this to python 3 and replaced the httplib/urllib pieces with the functions from the 'request' library for python 3 and everything is worked as expected. Including the payload as you described initially was key to get this working.

I can now loop through a folder on my GIS Server and update properties/capabilities for all services in the folder.

Big thank you for your help again.

Re: Enabling editing for bulk published feature services

LongDinh — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 00:14:10 GMT

Awesome work! Glad to hear you reached a solution 🙂

Re: Enabling editing for bulk published feature services

MichaelSnook — Wed, 23 Mar 2022 14:51:31 GMT

@tigerwoulds ..I am looking to do the exact same thing but I'm getting a bit lost on the upgrade. Can you share your working Python3 script by chance? Thanks!

Re: Enabling editing for bulk published feature services

DrewDowling — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 22:19:42 GMT

This seems to still be an issue in 2025, you can't use the ArcGIS python API to modify referenced feature services, or at least I couldn't get it working.

Here some code I wrote to use the ArcGIS Server admin rest endpoint instead. It updates the capability of all feature services in a folder to add Extract to the default Query capability. Hope it helps someone.

from arcgis import GIS import requests import json domain = 'gis.domain.org' folder = 'MyServerFolder' # login to GIS gis = GIS(url="https://gis.domain.org/portal/home", profile='sangis_portal_aiteadmin') token = gis._con.token # Get a list of services from ArcGIS Server # from a specific folder gis_servers = gis.admin.servers.list() print(gis_servers) # Assuming a single server for simplicity server1 = gis_servers[0] damoa_services = server1.services.list(folder=folder) for service in damoa_services: # Get the service definition service_def = requests.get(f'{service.url}?f=json&token={token}').json() service_name = service_def['serviceName'] # Loop through the service extensions to find the FeatureServer extension i=0 for ect in service_def['extensions']: if ect['typeName'] == 'FeatureServer': print("Enabling Feature Access capabilities...") print(f"original capabilities: {service_def['extensions'][i]['capabilities']}") # Update capabilities by editing the service definition service_def['extensions'][i]['capabilities'] = "Query,Extract" print(f"Updated capabilities: {service_def['extensions'][i]['capabilities']}") # Construct the URL for editing the service definition # This URL is specific to ArcGIS Server REST API edit_service_url = f"https://{domain}/arcgis/admin/services/{folder}/{service_name}.MapServer/edit" try: payload = { 'f': 'json', 'service':json.dumps(service_def), 'token':token } # Make the POST request to update the service definition response = requests.post(url=edit_service_url, data=payload) # Check if the request was successful # This doesn't work, 200 is returned even if the update fails # Check the responce conteent instead if response.status_code == 200: print("Capabilities updated successfully.") else: print(f"Failed to update capabilities: {response.text}") except requests.exceptions.RequestException as e: raise e i=0 break else: i += 1