topic Re: Custom properties for a webmap in ArcGIS Online Questions

Custom properties for a webmap

Anonymous User — Mon, 12 Mar 2018 19:44:12 GMT

This question is a bit more widely applicable than just ArcGIS Online I know, but my current focus is really within the context of webmaps in ArcGIS Online. I'm interested in comments both relating to AGOL and also to the wider use of the web map specification.

The question is two-fold:

Is there any way to include/add extra custom properties to the webmap?

Would doing this break anything - e.g. cause a webmap not to load in the map viewer, or not open in Collector?

Obviously, a webmap is just a JSON spec. I tried editing the JSON using ago assistant. I added a custom property and hit save. It appears to save, and I even can see a success response, but when I reload it, the custom property has disappeared. So something seems to be stripping it out. Meaning I can't even test the second part of my question, as I can't get a custom property to save.

Or is there some property that already exists (e.g. a metadata property of some sort) that allows me to save some custom key-value pairs in them that I can leverage?

Re: Custom properties for a webmap

AdrianWelsh — Tue, 13 Mar 2018 00:02:50 GMT

Paul,

I too have learned that when I do custom things to AGOL maps, I sometimes can save it and sometimes can see what I did, customly. Then when I open the map from another source, or just refresh, these things go away. This seems like a common lock down from AGOL.

I would say that you cannot likely add custom extra values to the JSON in a hosted AGOL map. Maybe in something served from Enterprise, but I don't know.

What are you trying to do exactly? Can you not include these parameters into the Description or Summary of your AGOL web map?

Re: Custom properties for a webmap

Anonymous User — Tue, 13 Mar 2018 00:10:37 GMT

Hi Adrian

Yeah, I had thought of that approach - of saving a json object directly into the Description field or otherwise. I guess it would work, and just parse it from there. It just seems a rather strange thing to do, and any casual user viewing the item in AGOL would see this odd code snippet! Plus, someone (i.e. me!) could easily delete or change it from the item page unintentionally and stuff it up so an application trying to parse it would break. I'm more looking at saving this info in a way that a script/app would read/write this extra info.

I'm not saying it wouldn't work, it just probably isn't a very good way to go about it. I'm still hoping there's another way!

cheers,

-Paul

Re: Custom properties for a webmap

KellyGerrow — Thu, 15 Mar 2018 23:06:02 GMT

Here is some information on the web map specification:

Web map specification overview | ArcGIS for Developers

-Kelly

Re: Custom properties for a webmap

Anonymous User — Tue, 20 Mar 2018 02:14:58 GMT

Thanks Kelly - I'd read through the specs, but couldn't see any particular place or way to save custom key-value data, hence the question. If you know of anything I've missed, let me know!

(I think we spoke at the Dev Summit? If so, thanks for your input there...)

cheers,

-Paul

Re: Custom properties for a webmap

XanderBakker — Tue, 20 Mar 2018 12:34:21 GMT

Why not store the key vale pairs in a table and access them from there (table | ArcGIS for Developers )

Re: Custom properties for a webmap

Anonymous User — Tue, 20 Mar 2018 20:25:55 GMT

Hi Xander

Thanks for the thought. Currently we do something similar, where the info is kept elsewhere and retrieved separately. The intent of the question was to find out if this extra complexity could be removed by simply storing this bit of info embedded actually in the webmap. Our application is obviously already retrieving the web map - it would make things so much easier if we could just access some custom properties from there.

cheers,

-Paul

Re: Custom properties for a webmap

PaulLohr — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 16:10:29 GMT

@XanderBakker - assuming we store the custom property and value in a table, how do we get the information on to the Item Details page? Web Map or item specific information would be useful on the Item Details page.

An example of how a custom property and value might be displayed is shown in the graphic below.

This would be useful for any type of AGOL item.

Thanks for any help.

Paul Lohr

Re: Custom properties for a webmap

XanderBakker — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 19:26:02 GMT

Sorry @PaulLohr , I have no clue on how to get that on the description page. You should probably ask this to the ArcGIS Online developers.