How to symbolize a Layer with a layerfile stored in an Add-In

WilliamKirchhoff — Fri, 20 Mar 2015 20:55:52 GMT

Here's the answer to a question I never got around to asking three days ago (no, I'm not looking for points - I just hope it saves someone else hours of fruitless searching).

I am writing an Add-In that creates featureclasses that I want to add symbology to before they are added to ArcMap. I created a template layer in an ArcMap session that provides the proper symbology then saved it out to a layerfile. The idea is to deploy the layerfile along with the add-in. A solution cobbled together from various sources (thanks to those who contributed, unfortunately I've lost the cites...)

1. In Visual Studio - create a new folder under your add-in project folder called (in this instance) "Layerfiles"

2. Copy / paste the template layerfile into the new folder

4. Set the saved layerfiles properties: Build Action = Content, Copy to Output Directory = Copy Always

3. Add method to project

private void AddSavedLayerFileToMap(string folderName, string layerName, IFeatureClass gpsFClass, string aliasName)

{

try

{

//... Get map from current MxDocument

IMap pMap = pMxDoc.ActiveView.FocusMap;

//... Get the path to the layerfile

string codeBase = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().CodeBase;

UriBuilder uri = new UriBuilder(codeBase);

string AsmPath = System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(Uri.UnescapeDataString(uri.Path));

string layerFilePath = System.IO.Path.Combine(AsmPath, folderName + "\\" + layerName);

//... Create the layer to add to ArcMap

ILayerFile layerFile = new LayerFileClass();

layerFile.New(layerFilePath);

ILayer pSymbolLayer = layerFile.Layer;

IFeatureLayer pSymFLayer = (IFeatureLayer)pSymbolLayer;

pSymFLayer.FeatureClass = gpsFClass;

pSymbolLayer.Name = aliasName;

pMap.AddLayer(pSymFLayer);

}

catch (Exception ex)

{

MessageBox.Show(ex.Message);

}

The values of the parameters:

foldername - name you gave to the folder you added to your project folder in Visual Studio

layername - name of the template layerfile you added to the above folder

featureclass - the featureclass you want to add to ArcMap symbolized with the layerfile template

aliasName - a friendly name to call the layer once its added to the TOC in ArcMap

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How to symbolize a Layer with a layerfile stored in an Add-In