topic Re: Toggle layers on and off in Web AppBuilder in ArcGIS Web AppBuilder Questions

Re: Toggle layers on and off in Web AppBuilder

StevenDouglas1 — Tue, 10 Nov 2015 16:17:05 GMT

UPDATED: See bottom of this question:

Since this is its own thread now, I'll go ahead and expand...

I am wondering how you get layers within groups to be toggle-able. The MXD was created to house all these layers within a group instead of having to create an mxd and a service for every single layer.

As you can see, when I create a map in web app builder, the layers are still defaulted to on all the time. Whereas, in another thread we were told there would be the ability to have check boxes for each layer within the group. Obviously when they're on all the time it is not useful as there are going to be >100 individual layers.

Is that something that needs to be changed first? If so where?

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Ok, so after some experimenting I seem to have realized something. The above screenshot is of raster layers. However, I've now added some polygons and point files and noticed that those are able to be toggled on and off.

Is the answer that shapefiles can be turned on and off within groups, but raster files cannot? If so, whats up with that? In the meantime I've found customized table of content widgets that should fix the problem, but 1) I'm waiting for my server admin to install WebApp builder developer ed. and 2) Why can't ESRI just make this a default? It seems so simple and useful...

Message was edited by: Steven Douglas

Re: Toggle layers on and off in Web AppBuilder

OwenGeo — Tue, 10 Nov 2015 16:32:48 GMT

Hi Steven - I split your post off of the rest of the discussion on Story Maps since your question is about Web AppBuilder and I moved it to the Web AppBuilder Place on GeoNet.

Owen

Re: Toggle layers on and off in Web AppBuilder

Jianxia — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 20:12:07 GMT

Steven,

Are those layers from ImageServer or MapServer? Can you toggle them in Map Viewer? If possible, can you share sample service for us to take a close look?

Thanks,

Jianxia

Re: Toggle layers on and off in Web AppBuilder

StevenDouglas1 — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 20:52:41 GMT

Thank you for the reply

They are hosted REST services from our server. I cannot toggle them in the map viewer or the web app. Unfortunately I don't think I can share anything since it is not published yet and therefore I don't have the permissions.

Re: Toggle layers on and off in Web AppBuilder

Jianxia — Tue, 08 Dec 2015 03:57:09 GMT

From the rest end point, can you tell which type of server it is? A MapServer of ImageServer, something like the links below:

USA (MapServer)

CharlotteLAS (ImageServer)

Thanks,

Jianxia

Re: Toggle layers on and off in Web AppBuilder

StevenDouglas1 — Tue, 08 Dec 2015 15:40:09 GMT

Oh I see what you mean.

They are MapServers.

Re: Toggle layers on and off in Web AppBuilder

StevenDouglas1 — Thu, 10 Dec 2015 17:04:43 GMT

Does that make a difference?

Re: Toggle layers on and off in Web AppBuilder

StevenDouglas1 — Thu, 10 Dec 2015 19:35:10 GMT

Well I think I discovered part of the problem.

I looked at a couple of the layers that were different (both vector polygons), one wasn't giving me this option. It turns out the ones that I cache do not give me the option to toggle each layer on and off. But now when I turn off the caching I can't get anything to display, but I guess thats a different issue...

Is this caching thing something that is known? Why won't it let me turn cached layers on and off?

Re: Toggle layers on and off in Web AppBuilder

Jianxia — Thu, 10 Dec 2015 20:20:55 GMT

I cannot tell without looking into the service. Just ran a quick test by publishing mapserver with image layer as sub -layers. lt seems fine. See the screenshot.

Jianxia

Re: Toggle layers on and off in Web AppBuilder

XiaodongWang — Fri, 11 Dec 2015 02:46:43 GMT

Only dynamic map service has ability to turn each sublayer on and off. Tiled map service layer does not have the ability to toggle each sublayer on and off, that is limited by service capability.

Re: Toggle layers on and off in Web AppBuilder

StevenDouglas1 — Fri, 11 Dec 2015 14:08:19 GMT

Ok, well I guess that answers that question.

I've seen that with the developer edition, there is a widget that can be coded to make layers toggle-able. Do you know if that is also limited by caching as well?

Thank you for your help,

Steven

Re: Toggle layers on and off in Web AppBuilder

RobertScheitlin__GISP — Fri, 11 Dec 2015 14:19:02 GMT

Steven,

Yes is is a limitation of the service itself. A Cached service is a collection of pre-generated tiles (images) of the map service with the default sublayers of the map service turned on or off. Because of that you can not dynamically change the visibility of the sub layers as the tiles are already generated using the default visibility and caching can be a very time consuming and resource intense process.

Re: Toggle layers on and off in Web AppBuilder

StevenDouglas1 — Fri, 11 Dec 2015 14:46:33 GMT

Ok, that makes sense. From what I've read it doesn't seem there are any alternatives are there? Does ESRI support grouping of layers in the layer list, if not will they? I believe I've seen that requested and highly liked in the ideas website. Can you do that in the widget?

Re: Toggle layers on and off in Web AppBuilder

RobertScheitlin__GISP — Fri, 11 Dec 2015 14:54:25 GMT

Steven,

Nope it is not a current option. I have been a widget developer (for flex and now JS and WAB) for many years and the reason (in my opinion) that no one has developed this ability is the shear complexity of the code that would be involved. There has been so workaround hacks for this in the Flex world but sometimes even though many people want and request something does not mean it is practical when is comes to coding.