topic Re: Vector Tile Layers and Querying in ArcGIS Online Questions

Vector Tile Layers and Querying

deleted-user-wgzH2d-p_0_f — Thu, 10 Nov 2016 19:00:10 GMT

Anyone know when the capability to query vector tile layers might become available? Right now I'm using a feature layer with no symbology over top of a vector tile layer to get querying capabilities, but it's very messy in the TOC and hard for users who don't have a GIS background (because they have to toggle on two different layers...).

Or...any other options?

Re: Vector Tile Layers and Querying

KellyGerrow — Thu, 17 Nov 2016 18:58:28 GMT

Hi Annina,

This functionality isn't available yet. I would like to encourage you to log an ArcGIS Ideas‌ about this as well as contact Esri Technical Support‌. There is a product enhancement that has been submitted and I would encourage you to ask to be attached so that you can be kept up to date on the status of the issue: ENH-000095476

-Kelly

Re: Vector Tile Layers and Querying

Matthew_Williams — Wed, 25 Nov 2020 18:46:19 GMT

Has there been any changes/updates to this since 2016?

Re: Vector Tile Layers and Querying

dmarkbreiter — Sun, 07 Mar 2021 20:24:55 GMT

I'm also quite curious @Matthew_Williams @KellyGerrow

Re: Vector Tile Layers and Querying

SimonColeman1 — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 09:20:27 GMT

me too!

Re: Vector Tile Layers and Querying

ahargreaves_FW — Thu, 26 Aug 2021 18:42:03 GMT

Me too. I've followed the directions in this article that states if you choose the option to cache online or on the server:

"A vector tile layer is shared with an associated feature layer. The feature layer supports editing, querying features outside the current view, and richer statistics."

I've since cached a layer online. It did indeed generate an associated Feature Service and via the settings for the AGOL item I am able to "Configure Attributes: Select the attributes to include in the vector tiles".

Sadly however now that cache has rebuilt itself I still get no access to attributes. What am I doing wrong here @KellyGerrow ?

This enhancement request was originally asked for in 2016! https://my.esri.com/#/support/bugs/ENH-000095476

Re: Vector Tile Layers and Querying

DavidPuckett — Wed, 26 Jan 2022 05:00:54 GMT

I did the same as @ahargreaves_FW above, Select attributes and Rebuild Cache. I then added a popup template that includes those attributes in the options when creating the vector tile layer but am getting this error when clicking a feature. So the question is:

Do we have access to attributes in a vector tile layer via popups? Or otherwise?

Re: Vector Tile Layers and Querying

ahargreaves_FW — Wed, 26 Jan 2022 15:17:14 GMT

Again, I'm hoping @KellyGerrow - Product Manager for ArcGIS Online - can help us?

Re: Vector Tile Layers and Querying

wcozzens — Wed, 23 Mar 2022 19:25:43 GMT

Okay, I'm going to jump on this bandwagon since I now need this.

Has there been any resolution? I too tried the method shown in the above posts and it did not work - no attribute data was generated along with the vector tiles. 6 years since the original request here. ESRI can you please respond?

Re: Vector Tile Layers and Querying

ahargreaves_FW — Wed, 23 Mar 2022 21:22:20 GMT

Maybe @JakeSkinner can help us?

Re: Vector Tile Layers and Querying

DanielleKulas — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 17:16:38 GMT

I'm currently trying the same and similarly cannot get this to work in the new map viewer. Hoping for some updates soon!

Re: Vector Tile Layers and Querying

compass_cartographic — Sun, 24 Apr 2022 13:13:29 GMT

Just found this post after posting my own asking for an update. Did anyone on this chain of posts ever find an answer they could share?

Re: Vector Tile Layers and Querying

ahargreaves_FW — Mon, 25 Apr 2022 12:30:22 GMT

I finally just opened a support ticket with Esri support to ask. Apparently query is not supported on Vector tile layers.

Re: Vector Tile Layers and Querying

Thomas_Fuhrmann — Mon, 15 Apr 2024 08:32:34 GMT

This functionality is now supported with the hitTest method of the MapView. See:

https://developers.arcgis.com/javascript/latest/api-reference/esri-views-MapView.html#hitTest

Re: Vector Tile Layers and Querying

Kevin_MacLeod — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 20:28:43 GMT

I spoke to Kelly and Garima in Basemaps about this 2018 as well at UC in person.

Ideally, vector tile layers would have the option of having attributes. In other words, vector feature layers. Perhaps this would be a wise default. Best of both worlds. Right now it seems one must author maps with cumbersome duplicates of all layers; one with mapserver or featureserver invisible and then vector tile companion sublayer for each layer as the visible layer. Conceptually, I think we all simply want featureserver layers that are tiled and thus load super-fast like vector tile layers. But act like featureserver layers in terms of attributes and querying. (And if one needs different symbology, the layer should be able to do that. Of course it won't be tiled but can render on-demand; same as layers currently do. Perhaps it would even intelligently begin to cache on the client and/or server; like rasters can)

The big reason is performance. Even mapServer can hit servers hard. There are many, many bottlenecks but 1) customers may not know of them 2) if we do we sometimes can't change them. For example, you could export your SDE daily into a web mercator file gdb on the C drive of the webserver and load balance the webserver or put the gdb on a load balanced SAN. Or if it is pulling from SDE make sure it is posted and rec'd, compressed, etc. However sometimes some or all these things are out of our control. Users hitting a county parcel layer will hammer the server. No fear! Vector tiles cut through all of this blazingly efficiently. But, no attributes. Unless we do the featurelayer workaround. Which most of us don't have time for except for limited flagship apps. I understand they are .pbf and so forth but perhaps the API could do this 'twin layer' feature/vector thing under the hood and simply make it "look" like one layer. Maybe for like Arc 11.4 next year or something.

I too hope this can get traction soon. Many folks are finally drinking the hosted feature layer kool-aid now. This would be a big sellling item to get the rest of everyone on-board with data store. (Because, we are losing a lot of power with SQL Server Management Studio and the like for direct SDE access to do stuff and fix stuff; with the black-box Portal data store in PostgreSQL. So this would be a tradeoff that may make it worthwhile. Or perhaps we could set up replication to the hosted data store from SDE to retain best of both worlds)