topic Re: Julie's export to .pdf widget in ArcGIS Viewer for Flex Questions

Julie's export to .pdf widget

JustinRiggs — Mon, 02 May 2011 16:04:47 GMT

Julie,

Thank you for posting on my earlier thread about an export to .pdf widget. I've downloaded your widget and for the most part have it working. I do have a couple of questions for you, though.

1) Why does the "bird" legend still show up in the .pdf?
2) Is there any way to get rid of the quadrants on the .pdf? My client just wants a straight .pdf of the map he/she sees on the screen.

Thanks again for an excellent widget. I'm very excited to have something that can "do the job".

Justin

Re: Julie's export to .pdf widget

KyleReese-Cassal — Mon, 02 May 2011 18:34:36 GMT

Hi Julie. It looks like the widget is referencing http://ec2-50-17-53-73.compute-1.amazonaws.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/ArcPyMapping/Birds/MapServer/0 in the python code? Is there a way to turn this off to remove the birds from the legend?

Thanks.

Re: Julie's export to .pdf widget

JustinRiggs — Wed, 04 May 2011 15:55:18 GMT

Kyle,

Did you ever figure this out? Is anyone else using this widget that can explain how it works and how to use it?

Thanks...

Re: Julie's export to .pdf widget

philippschnetzer — Wed, 04 May 2011 16:28:00 GMT

I will say this - I was pretty excited when I first discovered this tool. Installed and configured it following the instructions - that wasn't too bad. Only then did I realize that there isn't a direct link between what you see on the map and what gets printed. By this I mean that you have to configure your mxd templates for the layouts and the tool basically just grabs your extents and scale from the web app and uses that info to pan/zoom to that area in your mxd layout and then prints from that layout. The layout mxd does not care what layers you have checked on in your web app - like I said it only looks at your scale and extents...
This pretty much made this tool useless for me...although it could be useful if you have specific maps to print. For example, let's say you have a simple map and don't allow your users to turn on/off layers - then this would work well. Or you could call any of your layouts by a specific name (ie, "sewer 8X11") and have the template configured to show the sewer data - but this will always be confusing for your user when they are unable to print exactly what they see on the map.

Just check out the online local government template to see this tool in use and you will see what I am talking about: http://localgovtemplates2.esri.com/InfrastructureDashboard/index.html

Re: Julie's export to .pdf widget

JustinRiggs — Wed, 04 May 2011 16:35:38 GMT

I will say this - I was pretty excited when I first discovered this tool. Installed and configured it following the instructions - that wasn't too bad. Only then did I realize that there isn't a direct link between what you see on the map and what gets printed. By this I mean that you have to configure your mxd templates for the layouts and the tool basically just grabs your extents and scale from the web app and uses that info to pan/zoom to that area in your mxd layout and then prints from that layout. The layout mxd does not care what layers you have checked on in your web app - like I said it only looks at your scale and extents...
This pretty much made this tool useless for me...although it could be useful if you have specific maps to print. For example, let's say you have a simple map and don't allow your users to turn on/off layers - then this would work well. Or you could call any of your layouts by a specific name (ie, "sewer 8X11") and have the template configured to show the sewer data - but this will always be confusing for your user when they are unable to print exactly what they see on the map.

Just check out the online local government template to see this tool in use and you will see what I am talking about: http://localgovtemplates2.esri.com/InfrastructureDashboard/index.html

Ohhhh, this definitely won't work for me then. My users want to be able to print *exactly* what they see on the screen.

I hope that somebody can come up with a really good export to .pdf widget in the future. Actually, I wish *I* was smart enough to do it myself, but that just isn't going to happen this century.

Thanks for explaining this to me... it saved me a lot of headache and heartache.

Re: Julie's export to .pdf widget

HaroldBostic — Thu, 05 May 2011 00:56:48 GMT

Hello,

ESRI has posted a great blog about how to create print services. There are 3 examples, each increasing in functionality, including being able to print graphics. The link is http://blogs.esri.com/Dev/blogs/arcgisserver/archive/2011/04/12/An-introduction-to-arcpy.mapping-for-ArcGIS-Server-developers.aspx

While the client side examples use the esri js api, they could be easily portable to a FLEX widget. I will be creating a widget in one of my up coming projects but I'm not sure exactly when in the dev process I'm going to implement that functionality. I will post when it's complete though. In the meantime, I hope that blog helps.

Hmmmm, I have not looked at the current widget, but I suspect, like the ESRI blog, the power is in the print service, It's quite possible all you would have to do is subplant the ESRI print service for the current one and use most of the current widget to make the new call with updated parameters. Again, I have not looked at the widget so I could be way off

Re: Julie's export to .pdf widget

JustinRiggs — Thu, 05 May 2011 14:58:40 GMT

Hello,

ESRI has posted a great blog about how to create print services. There are 3 examples, each increasing in functionality, including being able to print graphics. The link is http://blogs.esri.com/Dev/blogs/arcgisserver/archive/2011/04/12/An-introduction-to-arcpy.mapping-for-ArcGIS-Server-developers.aspx

While the client side examples use the esri js api, they could be easily portable to a FLEX widget. I will be creating a widget in one of my up coming projects but I'm not sure exactly when in the dev process I'm going to implement that functionality. I will post when it's complete though. In the meantime, I hope that blog helps.

Hmmmm, I have not looked at the current widget, but I suspect, like the ESRI blog, the power is in the print service, It's quite possible all you would have to do is subplant the ESRI print service for the current one and use most of the current widget to make the new call with updated parameters. Again, I have not looked at the widget so I could be way off

Harold,

Thanks for pointing me to that blog entry. Unfortunately, I'm still too wet behind the ears to understand most of what's said there. I am excited to hear that you'll be developing a widget of your own, though, and even more excited to hear that you'll be sharing it with the community. I'll look forward to seeing it whenever you get around to developing it.

Justin

Re: Julie's export to .pdf widget

bentank — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 22:37:07 GMT

Has anyone made any progress in getting the "advanced" export to PDF widget working in Flex? with the ability to essentially save a screen shot of the view displaying the selected layers.

Re: Julie's export to .pdf widget

TomSchuller — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 07:40:35 GMT

bt29,
did you meaned this "advanced" export to pdf?
http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=6809086326ea4c76bf026a32bb9dd698

Tom

Re: Julie's export to .pdf widget

MarkHuffman — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 14:50:00 GMT

What Tom is referring to is what I switched to when I realized the other one wouldn't work for me.

It is a very full featured print widget that includes export to PDF, as well as to other formats. Kudos to Tom for developing it.

The widget page includes links to two forum threads that may answer many questions about installation, configuration, etc. Plus there is a link to a very helpful quick start installation guide that is actually very detailed.

(I was put off for a while by the widget page title, which may make little sense to tech newbies - JAVA? SOE? The key word is PRINT.)

Re: Julie's export to .pdf widget

NeoGeo — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 03:30:20 GMT

The other widget is probably better, but I thought I would add this in case someone was interested in using Julie's widget with the ArcPy backend. I personally am interested in trying ArcPy.

Yes you can get rid of the icons. You need to understand how the print widgets work first though. All of the export to pdf widgets are composed of two parts - the widget itself (Flex if you are using the Flex viewer) and a backend service. It cannot work on it's own without a backend service. Your options are the one with the Java backend mentioned later in this thread and the one with the Python based ArcPy backend, (and we have one in house with a .NET backend as well). If you want to use Julie's widget with the ArcPy backend, that is a separate download. They provided a link to it on the same page you downloaded the widget from. It is a separate setup for the backend. With the ArcPy backend, you create a geoprocessing service in ArcGIS server from the Python script. After that is done, you need to edit the widget configuration file and point it at your new geoprocessing service since the xml configuration file as downloaded is pointed at a sample server as you noticed. Since it is your geoprocessing service you can edit the python script to do whatever you want and use whatever mxd's you want it to use and edit them however you want.

One other item that drove me nuts. If you put the widget in the widgets folder instead of the samples folder it will not work unless you edit the skin location in source code and recompile the widget.

Hope this helps someone.