topic Geocoder requires City to find a match in ArcGIS Enterprise Questions

Geocoder requires City to find a match

PhilLarkin1 — Mon, 12 Aug 2019 21:53:03 GMT

When using geocoders on 10.7 (Point Address, Street Address) I'm unable to find a match if the City field is not populated. When used in ArcGIS Pro 2.4, the city field is not required and I get good returns.

Has anyone else noticed this issue?

Shana Britt‌

Re: Geocoder requires City to find a match

JoeBorgione — Mon, 12 Aug 2019 22:00:36 GMT

Did you use ArcGIS 10.7 and the create address locator tool to create your locators? If so, you need to go to the locator properties, Geocoding Options and change 'Match with no zones' from NO (the default) to YES.

Re: Geocoder requires City to find a match

PhilLarkin1 — Mon, 12 Aug 2019 22:11:55 GMT

Hi Joe, thanks for your reply.

I am using the Create Locator tool in ArcGIS Pro 2.4. I had tested 'Match out of range' set to Yes and No with no positive result. I'd expect a user to be able to pass a simple address, without sending a city.

Re: Geocoder requires City to find a match

JoeBorgione — Mon, 12 Aug 2019 22:42:09 GMT

I've been fighting with.... errrr I mean I've been using the Create Locator tool in 2.4 for the past few weeks and find it to be challenging. (Trying to be nice here....). The match out of range thing is a mystery to me. Mine have worked without passing a city, but when I create the locator, I only field map those fields I want, so I don't check anything I that is 'zone' related. No Neighborhood, No Metro Area, No City and so forth.

Here is a copy of the parameters I use in an address point role:

Parameters
Country or Region USA
Primary Table(s) AddressPoints PointAddress
Field Mapping
'PointAddress.HOUSE_NUMBER AddressPoints.ADDR_HN';
'PointAddress.STREET_PREFIX_DIR AddressPoints.ADDR_PD';
'PointAddress.STREET_NAME AddressPoints.ADDR_SN';
'PointAddress.STREET_SUFFIX_TYPE AddressPoints.ADDR_ST';
'PointAddress.STREET_SUFFIX_DIR AddressPoints.ADDR_SD';

You can capture this info when the tool completes: I use it so I can script creating locators.

Calling Eric Anderson‌ ; are you there?

Re: Geocoder requires City to find a match

PhilLarkin1 — Mon, 12 Aug 2019 22:52:11 GMT

I suppose removing City from the logic is a reasonable workaround for a small set of addresses. However, I'm trying to serve 200k addresses in various jurisdictions with matching street names. I want my locator to distinguish between cities, but I don't want this to be a required entry.

Thanks again for your input.

Re: Geocoder requires City to find a match

JoeBorgione — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 00:32:08 GMT

So you have the potential for the same address in two or more cities? I don't know of a way around using a city then to distguish them. You might try it without and then depend on suggestions so the end users make the choice. Kind of a give and take scenario for you.

Re: Geocoder requires City to find a match

PhilLarkin1 — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 15:48:36 GMT

That is correct. And yes, city is the distinguishing data point. My issue is that it appears to be a required field. If I submit a valid address without City no matches are returned....even when the tolerance is dropped very low.

I'm not sure how the suggestions would help if my locator is not built with City.

Premium support ticket time!

Re: Geocoder requires City to find a match

JoeBorgione — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 16:04:20 GMT

I wouldn't know either without trying it. I'm very lucky in the sense that in my area of operations (Salt Lake Valley, Utah) there are a dozen cities but they are all on the same grid. Other areas here in Utah like Utah Valley (aka Utah County) have as many grids as they do cities. I'd be in a padded cell by now if I had to deal with that!

Re: Geocoder requires City to find a match

EricAnderson17 — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 17:14:21 GMT

Hi Phil,

Can you expand on what you mean by "When using geocoders on 10.7". Are you using ArcGIS Desktop 10.7? ArcGIS Enterprise 10.7?

You stated you used the Create Locator tool in ArcGIS Pro 2.4 and when used in ArcGIS Pro 2.4 you "get good returns". So where exactly are you seeing the issue with no matches being returned without a city? Can you provide any relevant screenshots?

Thank you,

Eric

Re: Geocoder requires City to find a match

PhilLarkin1 — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 17:38:52 GMT

Hi Eric, thanks for your reply.

I am publishing to ArcGIS Enterprise 10.7 via ArcGIS Pro 2.4. When searching via the geocode service, specifically findAddressCandidates, City appears to be required. When testing the locator that is published to Enterprise in Pro, the desired behavior is experienced: locator returns results when City is not passed.

Re: Geocoder requires City to find a match

EricAnderson17 — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 17:52:08 GMT

Got it, thank you for the clarification Phil! I'm seeing the same thing on my end with a Point Address locator I created in Pro 2.4 and published to Enterprise 10.7.1.

What's odd is if you bring that geocode service into ArcGIS Pro (Catalog pane > Portal tab), it behaves the same way as the local locator and allows you to search for the address without a city. So it seems like only when submitting a request directly from the REST end-point of the service is the city name required.

From what I can tell from Fiddler, the difference is that the request from ArcGIS Pro includes a "location" parameter, while the request from REST does not (unless of course you specifically include one). If I take the "location" parameter and simply include that onto the REST request, it is successful.

I'd say we have enough here to investigate this a little more thoroughly and I would definitely recommend following up with that Support case. If you want to reference this GeoNet post, I'd be happy to link up with the analyst who takes ownership and pass on my testing notes.

Best regards,

Eric

Re: Geocoder requires City to find a match

EricAnderson17 — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 18:05:57 GMT

Hi Phil,

To expand on my previous message, looking at more information about the "location" parameter (documentation is for the World Gecoding Service, but the principles are the same), I see this following note:

The location parameter can be used in place of administrative zone (city) or postal code in an address search, as long as a matching address exists within 50 kilometers of the input location. Consider the following example.
251 Vesey St, New York, 10282 is an address in Manhattan, New York City.
Coordinates -74.006,40.71437 represent a point within central Manhattan, less than one kilometer away from the address.
If you search for "251 Vesey St"(no city or postal) with location=-74.006,40.71437included in the request, a match to 251 Vesey St, New York, 10282 is returned. However, if instead you search for"251 Vesey St" with a location value in Washington, DC (350 kilometers away) an address match is not returned.

findAddressCandidates—ArcGIS REST API: World Geocoding Service | ArcGIS for Developers

So because ArcGIS Pro is including this location parameter, the city name is not required. Therefore, this may be expected behavior but it may be good to still log that Support case so we can confirm fully and document this for future users who may have this same question/issue.

Best regards,

Eric

Re: Geocoder requires City to find a match

JoeBorgione — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 19:02:13 GMT

Eric: you better get some snickers bars stocked up....

Re: Geocoder requires City to find a match

PhilLarkin1 — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 16:11:40 GMT

Well, the answer back from Support is one that has been given since at least 10.1:

Modify the loc file to include: supportsOptionalZone = true

Manually editing a file is kludgy. I'd really like to see:

Locator properties exposed in arcpy
Locator properties exposed in the UI for Create Locator and Create Address Locator tools in ArcMap/Pro.
Snickers bars mailed out to all the users that test new products extensively and version after version ask for the same enhancements/bug fixes.

Thanks for your help Eric and Joe.

Re: Geocoder requires City to find a match

EricAnderson17 — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 16:25:50 GMT

Thanks for following up and closing the loop on this one Phil.

From what we found, by default you need either an admin zone (city, state, postal code), a location parameter, or an extent to return a successful match. For the new locators (those built with the Create Locator tool), if you build the locator without zones, a property will automatically get added to your locator and set to true (supportsOptionalZone = true). This property is not exposed in the properties UI currently but can be manually added to the locator *.loc file as you stated above (simply edit with Notepad and add that "supportsOptionalZone = true" line to the bottom).

We're going to work on making sure we get an enhancement logged so this setting will be exposed through the UI so the manual change to the *.loc file would not be necessary. Having this property exposed through Python is also a great suggestion. I'll follow up about the Snickers bars 🙂

Thanks for the discussions on this and helping us improve the product!

-Eric

Re: Geocoder requires City to find a match

PhilLarkin1 — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 16:49:13 GMT

To Clarify:

if you build the locator without zones

Zone preference is simply not exposed in CreateLocator. This is not something a user can affect when running the tool.

a property will automatically get added to your locator and set to true (supportsOptionalZone = true)

When a locator is built the property is not written to the loc file in Pro at 2.4. Why would it need to be written to the file if it wasn't there already? The instruction would have been, in my case, to flip this to false. Instead I need to add the entire property to the file every time I build the locator.

It is odd, and a bit frustrating, for these hidden properties to not be documented and available in the UI and arcpy.

Thanks again.

Re: Geocoder requires City to find a match

EricAnderson17 — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 16:57:05 GMT

Hi Phil,

By "if you build the locator without zones", I meant if you run the Create Locator tool without specifying any zonal fields (city, state, postal, etc.) in the field mapping (only house number + street name).

If you build the locator without specifying any zonal fields in the field mapping, that's when the supportsOptionalZone parameter gets automatically applied to the *.loc file. If you did build the locator with a zonal field (which it sounds like you did with the city field), this setting is not applied and must be manually added if you attempt to search for an address without one of those three things I mentioned earlier (admin zone, location parameter, or extent).

Again, we are definitely working on getting an enhancement logged so these settings will be exposed through the UI. Manually adding that "supportsOptionalZone = true" line to the *.loc file is just a solution for now until that gets reviewed and hopefully implemented.

Best regards,

Eric

Re: Geocoder requires City to find a match

PhilLarkin1 — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 20:22:36 GMT

Ok, thanks for clarifying.

Re: Geocoder requires City to find a match

PhilLarkin1 — Thu, 28 May 2020 21:34:30 GMT

Apparently this has been fixed in 2.5. I have not tested.

ENH-000124557 [Enhancement] Provide the ability to set the "supportsOptionalZone" property for a locator built with the Create Locator tool in ArcGIS Pro directly from the UI

https://my.esri.com/#/support/bugs/ENH-000124557

Re: Geocoder requires City to find a match

PhilLarkin1 — Tue, 28 Jul 2020 21:09:29 GMT

Arcpy at Pro 2.6 now includes a Geocoding module and Locator class.

Locator—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation