topic Re: Web App Builder (Beta 3) in ArcGIS Web AppBuilder Questions

Web App Builder (Beta 3)

BrianO_keefe — Tue, 14 Oct 2014 20:14:43 GMT

I'm toasted.

I've spent 2 days now trying to develop an app with Web App Builder.

1) Local

Downloaded Web App Builder (Beta 3). Set it up on my server. Double-clicked startup.bat and get nothing but errors. Don't know if it's due to having a WebAdaptor or what, but I can't get it to work. My co-worker is suddenly decisively moving forward trying to unlock the errors but I'm done.

2) ArcGIS Online

Built the entire web app with Web App Builder (Beta 3) online. Laid it out, setup the pop-ups, configured the widgets, and then realized there wasn't a 'download' button. Almost lost my mind.

3) Web App Viewer

Downloaded this cockamammy nonsense and am proceeding to pull my hair out.

http://maps.cityoftulsa.org/iot/

There's the URL. I keep getting 'Forbidden Access' and I have no idea why. I'm editing the config.json file, but I'm quickly losing hope. Long week... and it's only Tuesday.

I figured this whole process would be INFINITELY easier if we just installed Portal but I don't have the time to even research it thoroughly enough to figure out if it will cause issues with our current configurations?! Ugh.

Re: Web App Builder (Beta 3)

BrianO_keefe — Tue, 14 Oct 2014 20:43:16 GMT

I think my favorite part of this confusing process is:

http://doc.arcgis.com/en/web-appbuilder/manage-apps/deploy-app.htm

Add custom widgets:

Put the custom widget in widgets folder.

Add the widget into app’s config.json.

Taking Demo widget as an example. Add it into config.json file

{ "name": "Demo", "label": "Demo", "uri": "widgets/Demo/Widget", "index": 13, "id": "widgets/Demo/Widget_1"  },

'Put the custom widget in widgets folder.'

What? This 'app' has ONE folder... called dynamic-modules and there are no widget folders or files in the entire thing.

It's like the people at ESRI that developed this app have NEVER had to install or set it up. I'm getting to that point where I just go back to FlexViewer for development... which is making me frustrated.

Re: Web App Builder (Beta 3)

RobertScheitlin__GISP — Tue, 14 Oct 2014 21:22:37 GMT

Brian,

Did you have Beta 2 Developer version working in your development machine? I have not messed with the ArcGIS Online version but here is a thread about accessing your app once you are done configuring it online: Access WAB app

I am not even sure what "Web App Viewer" is...

In your second post you mention there is no widgets folder... Your app that you move to your web server should definitely have a widgets folder. Using my local Beta3 developer version I can add custom widgets to this path (based on the fact that I downloaded the Beta3 to my C:\webappbuilder3 folder) C:\webappbuilder3\client\stemapp\widgets

Re: Web App Builder (Beta 3)

BrianO_keefe — Wed, 15 Oct 2014 14:21:39 GMT

Yeah, apparently the Web App Viewer App is a means of storing locally some kind of reference / pointer to your Web App built with the Online Web App Builder. It has NO widget folders because you should have configured those online and any custom widgets you 'apparently' have to create and configure personally.

I never had the time to get the Beta 2 Dev setup. I am inundated with putting out fire projects. Now I have a big streets project map I have to deploy and I'm leaning towards just installing Portal so I can do all of this on our server instead of dancing with ArcGIS Online.

Ugh!

Re: Web App Builder (Beta 3)

RobertScheitlin__GISP — Wed, 15 Oct 2014 14:27:41 GMT

Brain,

As the WAB is not fully released I would not be looking at it as a platform for your time constraint projects.

Re: Web App Builder (Beta 3)

BrianO_keefe — Wed, 15 Oct 2014 14:31:30 GMT

I know. I'm currently researching Portal.

I'm 100% averse to pointing our customers to ArcGIS online for any maps we develop as we already have a clustered ArcGIS Server system with a Web Adaptor setup and running.

So now I'm trying to figure out what pitfalls there are in deploying Portal on an already clustered / web adaptored system... *facepalm*

Re: Web App Builder (Beta 3)

LeeGraham — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 17:34:57 GMT

If you don't like AGOO/AGO, you will definitely be frustrated by Portal. We are using both extensively, and Portal is currently running about 2 clicks behind AGOO/AGO. The basic process of creating an application with webapp builder, however, is essentially the same, except for dealing with the authentication aspect.

Re: Web App Builder (Beta 3)

BrianO_keefe — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 18:11:54 GMT

My problem with AGOO/AGO is merely that I dislike sending clients (ergo the public) to a non-City website to view our data. We didn't populate Google Maps for the public and we won't populate AGOO/AGO maps for the public neither.

I want all maps to be built and published from the very expensive servers we already have... lol.

But now I have to ask... what do you mean, "2 clicks behind?"

Re: Web App Builder (Beta 3)

BradNesom — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 22:33:21 GMT

It's just koolaid

Re: Web App Builder (Beta 3)

glennhazelton — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 11:45:32 GMT

i'm about to go down the Portal path to get around the issue of having to use Token based authentication. are you using Active Directory to authenticate secure services?

Re: Web App Builder (Beta 3)

BrianO_keefe — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 11:55:00 GMT

Glen,

That is the direction we are planning on. My biggest problem is time.

In order to implement the level of security that we want AND need, I have to get with the AD people and find out a group that basically IS all City Employees. I literally do not have the time to just find out who the AD people are much less contact them and ask about these groups.

I am being given "this important department needs this" or "this important person has to have one of these" types of projects on an almost hourly basis. I don't have time to do the simple and vitally important things like build a foundation. I should be cloistered in a room delving into Dojo so that I can start coding customer widgets, tightening up the few javascript maps we do have, developing replacements for the now outdated flex maps that are still staring at me daily.

Instead, I just spent a week getting WAB installed so I could dev a map for our Streets Projects under one of our Tax programs. And now I am a week late to a Story map for our Planning department. I want to be doing what Robert Scheitlin‌ is doing and learning the API intimately and custom coding components to make maps that are amazing... not just requested.

Sorry, mini-rant there.

Glen, yes. Our goal is to use AD authentication to power our security on WebAdaptor. I was HOPING that Portal would add another layer to this security. I still haven't had time to dig through all the documentation for Portal that I need to yet. But I hope to.

Re: Web App Builder (Beta 3)

glennhazelton — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 12:10:30 GMT

thanks for the response. I feel your pain. it seems that most of us are chief-cook-and-bottle-washer types. by our nature we tend to be the hub of many tasks and projects. for my part I am not very pleased that I have to become a 'coder' as well. thus my desire to leverage the great works of Robert S and Larry S and others who are bravely developing code we can all use by configuring. I think esri should pay them for their efforts and develop more usability into their apps.

as far as Portal goes, from all I have read it does support AD and so groups that are setup in AD can be used to authenticate. so there will not be a need to rebuild groups in ArcServer manager. in our AD environment we have a group that contains all employees called 'domain users'. I have had the network people add a couple other groups populated with people who could publish maps or just view them. we have a policy where not everyone in the organization can see the location of our pipes etc. , so I can only use the domain user group for things like our service area.

perhaps we can help each other as we go through the Portal..

Re: Web App Builder (Beta 3)

BrianO_keefe — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 12:44:41 GMT

I would like that.

I gotta throw in, I am more coder than GIS. My GIS experience comes from working in a department that talked GIS but acted CAD. I was thrown at GeoMedia for a few years and by learning my way around the interface I was able to suss out basic GIS concepts. Personal research brought me closer to the stronger knowledge I have now, that and some amazing Gurus who answered any question I had. I had some ESRI from back in the early 90's from the Marines, but it was for my Field Artillery Fire Controllman training and was mainly for locating things on a map and some survey classes. Currently I have access to someone who I consider to be a definitive answer for all things GIS. I'm trying to be the GIS Programmer guy as I manage our web maps and tech-type work.

So I am in-between both worlds kinda, lol. I love both GIS and programming. Especially web programming. But I have little, to no, official training. So I have a weak foundation but strong experiential knowledge of web dev. I can take apart code and re-write a lot... but writing from scratch in Javascript gives me hives. I have tried to dig into Dojo but keep hitting dead-ends in my learning. So I'm hanging on waiting for someone to put together a decent (free) online Dojo course that I can watch.

ANYWAY... Portal is my current dream. If I never have to sign on to my AGOO/AGO platform again it will be too soon. I would rather see that kind of functionality locally on our clustered servers. Being able to develop a web map in the AGOO/AGO styled system and deploy FROM that system is where I am dreaming towards. That and WAB Widget dev.

Well, before this becomes a novel. Peace.

Re: Web App Builder (Beta 3)

glennhazelton — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 12:59:56 GMT

Larry Stout Larry.Stout@hamiltoncounty.in.gov

has been on a crusade to get WAB able to use rest end pts without going through portal or AGOL. I think we all should be supporting his efforts. I am not very interested in having to pay esri for 'named user' seats to Portal for people who are behind the firewall at desks wanting to see a map. I can understand the model for field people who will be logging in from the field on tablets....

Re: Web App Builder (Beta 3)

BrianO_keefe — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 13:05:28 GMT

I also think that WAB should have more custom config points.

If I want the legend to sit in the top right of my map, in a floating pop-up, with an image as the background, and have a height of X and a width of Y, I should be able to manipulate all of that from the builder. Not in code that will get overwritten at the first update to my app.

That and favicon. I have had to re-code the stupid favicon (and custom CSS for customer legend sizing) for this map I developed in WAB 6 times. Ugh X 6.

Re: Web App Builder (Beta 3)

BrianO_keefe — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 13:08:07 GMT

But don't get me wrong.

I've been harping at work for months now saying I needed time to develop a javascript library for building web maps because all of the ArcGIS Javascript API examples were one-shot wonders and no, I can't just add more buttons to one of those maps and have it be what you are requesting. The WAB fulfills a MUCH needed slot. I can dev a whole map there, then adjust the code as needed.

It's just those updates that are killing me.

Re: Web App Builder (Beta 3)

LeeGraham — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 14:13:28 GMT

All 3 of the authentication issues for Portal require you to configure your Portal to SSL only, meaning you have to take special measures to load any http content - meaning almost anyone's external services. Setting up the proxy page to work well is difficult and even if set up properly will slow down your response, even more than the SSL does. SSL = slow response, SSL + proxy = much slower response, even if you have very powerful servers and highly optimized data (well-thought out spatial and attributes indexes, well constructed map documents, etc) and services. It is still buggy as far as carrying the https all the way through all pages, and the bugginess is different among the various browsers.

As far as AWAB, Esri is consistently developing for AGOO/AGO first, and then circling back to fit in the IWA and PKI-based Windows authentication methods, so if you are using those, chances are you will get stuck on an earlier beta for some time. We got stuck using Beta1 until this week - not that it is a huge deal as we also used Beta 2 on an AGOO hosted project and did not see any real differences. Also, the custom widgets developed by our group in Beta 1 work in Beta 3 with no real changes. What we haven't figured out if how to get the new Beta3 to work with web tier authentication - there is a flag we can see but have not gotten it to work. We can see the code behind that is doing stuff - but we will have to work through this and will keep you updated once we get it figured out. That is what I meant by two-clicks behind as far as this Beta program.

Re: Web App Builder (Beta 3)

glennhazelton — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 14:42:35 GMT

thanks for the info Lee,

can you explain a bit more about 'special measures' to configure portal for SSL please.

for example do you have to have a valid https certificate for the server it is on? we generally don't buy these for servers behind the firewall and just set the SSL setting in IIS to 'ignore' so warning aren't thrown.

or maybe you are saying that with SSL only set you cannot add mapservices with just http: headings... which doesn't sound very good. how have you gotten around this?

I'd also like to understand a bit more about configuring the proxy. is this required? does it have an advantage?

I find it interesting and a bit overwhelming that all this is so complex and so poorly supported or documented. if you find someone at esri tech support who truly understands all this let me know. I am sure I will be calling and it would be nice to have someone specific to talk to.

meanwhile we can support each other on the is forum.

Re: Web App Builder (Beta 3)

AaronKreag — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 19:59:12 GMT

Brian,

I am reading this thread and all I can think of is that you need a vacation.

That said....just so I am correct. I have the Flex 3.6 builder and some decent maps running. We do NOT have a JS/HTML5 builder that installs on my web server and can be used to push some maps that can then be customized like in the Flex world. Is that right?

Thus far, after looking at all this stuff online it looks like I am being forced to live in the ESRI ArcOnline world....where I do NOT want to live.

Re: Web App Builder (Beta 3)

BrianO_keefe — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 20:05:53 GMT

lol... yeah. I can't even begin to explain how right you are.

UGH!

But yeah, if you are running Flex then you aren't doing JS/HTML5. At one point I was dedicated to re-learning Flex. I had developed in it several years ago (mainly for entertainment projects) but had fallen so out of touch with it that it felt like learning it for the first time when I tried to pick it back up.

Needless to say, we are in full-on JS mode. It's the non-compiling, mobile-ready, -ness of it all that really is powering our shift away from Flex and Into Javascript. Being able to open text editor and customize all aspects of the map and it's widgets in minutes makes Javascript a choice I can agree with.

I'm pushing Portal on my GIS group (me, my GIS Lead, and the GIS DBA). I can't believe it's more integrated with ArcGIS Server!? I mean, if we spend THOUSANDS of dollars on setting up our own servers, building our own enterprise GIS databases, maintaining all of it, building our own web maps, and then we have to re-direct through ArcGIS online?!?!?!?

No thanks.

I'm going with Portal (and whatever headaches that I believe will come with it) and I don't plan on looking back.