topic Finder - help Message Box link fails in ArcGIS Online Questions

Finder - help Message Box link fails

ScottThomas1 — Wed, 25 Jun 2014 14:46:17 GMT

In Finder, I configured a link in the help message box while using the online interface. It works.
http://www.arcgis.com/apps/Solutions/s2.html?appid=c3f7ae6ee9f54761b87fd51b3db93da1

When I take the exact same code and drop it in the Finder app hosted locally, it fails.
I get this message: "Unable to access application's configuration"

My code for the link:
<a href="http://cayugacounty.us/realproperty" target='_blank'>Real Property Home Page</a> "

Any ideas on what's happening here?

Scott

Re: Finder - help Message Box link fails

MikeTschudi — Thu, 26 Jun 2014 15:19:16 GMT

Scott,

This message occurs when the app, during startup, cannot get access to or find the configuration information; without the information, it cannot build the user interface.

How are you running the app locally-hosted? There are two methods, and that will help to figure out what's happening:

http://<myserver>/<mysite>/s2.html?appid=c3f7ae6ee9f54761b87fd51b3db93da1

http://<myserver>/<mysite>/s2.html?app=apps2/Finder

In the first one, the app is seeking the configuration and user interface from ArcGIS Online using the app id; in the second one, the app is seeking the configuration and UI from the file Finder.json in the site's apps2 folder.

You can test your site setup by downloading Finder_try_it.json from GitHub (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Esri/local-government-online-apps/master/apps2/Finder_try_it.json), putting it in your site's apps2 folder, and running it using

http://<myserver>/<mysite>/s2.html?app=apps2/Finder_try_it

.

A next test can be to use Finder.json modified with your app's configuration values; you can download the one that I created for you from http://localgovtemplates2.esri.com/Support/CayugaCounty.json, put it in your site's apps2 folder, and run it using

http://<myserver>/<mysite>/s2.html?app=apps2/CayugaCounty

.

After making any changes to a JSON configuration + UI file, be sure to run the file through a lint check such as http://www.jslint.com/ or http://jsonlint.com/. Parsers of the JSON format can be tripped up by stray or missing punctuation. The parser will give a generic error to the app in this case, and the app will be unable to create its user interface or to run.

Regards,
Mike

Re: Finder - help Message Box link fails

ScottThomas1 — Thu, 26 Jun 2014 17:17:02 GMT

That works great.
I just copied the the "helpMessageBox.content": portion of the one you made and pasted it into my locally hosted app.
So it seems that it's OK to drop standard html into the online configuration tool, but the local version is more particular and needs the java.
Thanks Mike!