idea Vector Tile Layers Querying/Legends in ArcGIS Online Ideas

Vector Tile Layers Querying/Legends

deleted-user-wgzH2d-p_0_f — Thu, 17 Nov 2016 19:12:27 GMT

Would love to see the capability to query vector tile layers and to see the symbology in ArcOnline legends. Currently, I am creating a vector tile layer and also a feature layer. I'm making the feature layer transparent so I can still get the functionality of the vector tile layer (fast drawing) with the capability of querying. However, this results in two layers I have to remember to turn on, and it makes it hard for non-GISers to understand. As for the symbology, I think we're just hoping that people won't need to see what the individual symbols mean at a small scale. Our only other option is to make a static legend in the map window, but it will be quite large, and users don't always need to see it.

Re: Vector Tile Layers Querying/Legends

MikeLeech1 — Tue, 25 Jul 2017 15:39:39 GMT

Is there a work around for this in the meantime (to display vector tile legends in AGOL)?

Re: Vector Tile Layers Querying/Legends

deleted-user-RAnWn8DDSd1P — Tue, 17 Oct 2017 21:20:56 GMT

So there's currently no way to get use the legend widget with a vector tile layer?

Re: Vector Tile Layers Querying/Legends

EricPeña — Tue, 17 Oct 2017 21:50:48 GMT

I think legends may be possible in the future, but querying may be out of the question. I think vector tile layers strip out the attribute tables of participating features so there'd be nothing to query. I could be wrong, but I think that's how they work.

Re: Vector Tile Layers Querying/Legends

Joao_PauloPaschoal — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 14:48:19 GMT

Any update from Esri about supporting Legend capability to VectorTileLayers? We have a lot of data we plan to service as Vector Tile but without a legend it wont be much useful to end users. Best regards.

Re: Vector Tile Layers Querying/Legends

deleted-user-RAnWn8DDSd1P — Wed, 25 Jul 2018 14:56:39 GMT

Almost 2 years since this idea was suggested. Unbelievable there's no solution to legend for vector tile layer yet.

Re: Vector Tile Layers Querying/Legends

ThorstenDey1 — Thu, 09 Aug 2018 11:38:40 GMT

I voted this up. Any Workaround? I hope ESRI will soon present a solution. For some datasets only this format makes sense, but without a legend ...

Re: Vector Tile Layers Querying/Legends

Anonymous User — Tue, 30 Oct 2018 10:28:08 GMT

Seriously disappointing

Re: Vector Tile Layers Querying/Legends

Anonymous User — Mon, 03 Dec 2018 15:55:15 GMT

Here is what my understanding was. They would pair it with a featureService for querying and symbology. The tile layer would be for rapid visual display; its twin featureService would respond to queries. In other words it would function like a featureLayer but ... way, way faster. For now I use map image/dynamic layers because I've found feature service layers to be too slow. Vector tiles held promise, I thought. Because seeing is believing, I went to Dev Conf this year and saw them tile all the roads in New Zealand in 30 seconds into 20 megs. So... I was sold. I was envisioning just running vector tiling on all our SDE layers that are in viewers every Fri night and so it would update over the weekend to a replicated wkid 3857 fGDB or something, to power viewers.

Now, the thing is we all want popups for our layers, and perhaps supporting querying and having symbology in legends and working like "regular" vector layers vis a vis feature services or dynamic services. I hope Esri can make this happen. Now.... In parallel, they've created the webGL layers. I tested those over the summer. Seemed like that was the compromise- lots of speed, while working just like feature layers. Well.. they usually didn't work, Chrome says there are too many "web GL workers" and it crashes or halts the page. In other words, after a few minutes I concluded the webGL layers are not ready for prime time. Whichever way they go, webGL layer or Vector Tile, I am looking forward to. Mostly for speed. Users have a "need for speed". These both look promising.

Re: Vector Tile Layers Querying/Legends

Douglas_Sauer — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 17:16:02 GMT

calling all Redlands vector tile dev peeps:

https://youtu.be/uhiCFdWeQfA

Here's to keeping this 2016 idea live into 2019

anyone, anyone???

Re: Vector Tile Layers Querying/Legends

JoelMcKechnie1 — Wed, 16 Jan 2019 04:50:57 GMT

I've had the exact same issue and solution, querying vector tiles directly would be a godsend.

My work around involved three layers. One for viewing (vector tile), one for querying (transparent feature layer) and one for the legend (symbolised completely, but with 0 features to draw). I then set the legend widget to only view the 'legend' layer. The limitation of this method: it cannot be dynamic with your view extent, and doesn't allow the user to fettle the transparency, layer order, etc. without giving away your secret multi-layer method...

Craig Shephard‌, Andy Clark, Jeremy Wolff‌ please up vote this idea.

Re: Vector Tile Layers Querying/Legends

BrianWilson — Tue, 28 Jan 2020 17:13:55 GMT

Apparently it's not impossible, as OpenLayers supports querying vector tiles, here is an example: https://openlayers.org/en/latest/examples/vector-tile-info.html?q=vector+tile

I have to test and see if it works with an ESRI service too. Will do that in a bit and come back here.

Re: Vector Tile Layers Querying/Legends

BrianWilson — Sat, 01 Feb 2020 00:55:35 GMT

Okay so my test was far easier than I thought it would be. The URL for the OpenLayers example used an ESRI service!

It's only showing one attribute, I suspect that's what is in the vector file?

The URL used in the example is is https://basemaps.arcgis.com/v1/arcgis/rest/services/World_Basemap/VectorTileServer/tile/{z}/{y}/{x}.pbf

I tried with several layers that are served from my own Portal and I can see them too

so the query limitation is in ArcGIS JavaScript API and not in the tile service itself.

I wish OpenLayers could read the styles from ESRI instead of showing thin blue lines for everything.

Re: Vector Tile Layers Querying/Legends

VHolubec — Fri, 07 Feb 2020 13:31:31 GMT

The enhancement about it exist - ENH-000095476.

Please Kelly Gerrow‌, is there any update about the future of Query and Legends for Vector tiles? Many of our customers, as well as users above, are waiting for this great but still missing feature.

Thank you.

Re: Vector Tile Layers Querying/Legends

AlanScandrett — Fri, 28 Feb 2020 01:00:19 GMT

We have seen demand uptick for this functionality from clients as well here at Esri Australia, and as this continues to grow it seems like the lack of popup functionality on the online viewers for Vector Tiles is going to become a wider issue.

Re: Vector Tile Layers Querying/Legends

Anonymous User — Mon, 02 Mar 2020 14:15:55 GMT

Bottom line, I was hoping to publish services with the functionality of featurelayers and the speed of vector tiles. Simply. The stack complexity is growing particularly for simple tasks like this and that is concerning. Speed of serving layers has long been an issue and most solutions are too complex or finicky to implement. Vector tiles work and they work well; they just need to behave like featureLayers and that would be a good solution for the performance issue. However the implementation has to be fairly simple and reliable.

Re: Vector Tile Layers Querying/Legends

AZendel — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 15:09:57 GMT

We need this!

Re: Vector Tile Layers Querying/Legends

MatthewHampton2 — Fri, 18 Dec 2020 18:02:07 GMT

Bueller? Bueller?

Re: Vector Tile Layers Querying/Legends

AllisonHockey — Sat, 20 Feb 2021 11:07:07 GMT

Any update to this? Would love to be able to query my vector tile layers and have my end users do the same.

Re: Vector Tile Layers Querying/Legends

Daniel-Miller — Thu, 29 Sep 2022 06:27:36 GMT

We have recently deployed new vector tile basemaps and our customers love them but are asking to see a legend. This idea has been in for six years and still no legend!

We would love to see query functionality as well.