Overlap labels rather than not displaying them

[MatthewHamilton-Smith]

By default, feature labels do not appear when overlapping with other labels. There is ample documentation on how to change this default behaviour so that all labels appear (and overlap, if necessary):

Why specify methods to resolve label conflicts?—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop 

Unfortunately, this documentation only applies to ArcGIS for Desktop. I cannot find anything that suggests you can change the default behaviour when using the Javascript API. It seems strange that this would be the case, however, considering that the functionality is present in the Desktop software.

Does anyone know how to make it so that all labels are displayed, and overlap when they conflict?

[RobertScheitlin__GISP · Accepted solution]

Matthew,

  Actually it should not be strange at all. Desktop and web based maps are two totally different animals using two totally different technologies. The answer to your question is no. You can not get the JS API to label a layer clientside and have label overlaps. If you want to have your labels exactly the way you see them in desktop then let ArcGIS Server do labeling for you by using a MapImageLayer and have the map service (MXD) label for you.

[mgeorge]

Hi Matthew Hamilton-Smith‌

We've definitely heard from other users that they would also like an option to disable label deconfliction, and hope to be able to add this in the near feature (within 2-3 releases). 

[PraveenPonnusamy]

Hi Matthew,

Can you give us some more information about the specific scenario where you're trying to keep overlapping labels?

1. are you working with points, lines or polygons?

2. do you plan to keep overlapping labels at small scales (i.e. when zoomed out to see the entire world for example) where labels for a dense dataset may overlap heavily.

3. what kind of text do you intend to display as labels in this case? Ex: a numeric value (magnitude of earthquake, feature id etc) or name of the feature? Can the label be a multi-word text?

4. how do you intend to place these labels? Ex: directly over the circle marker symbol at its center, or outside the marker to the side/top/bottom?

We are trying to better understand the circumstances under which users want to keep overlapping labels. Thank you.

[Gohvelven]

Hi,

I'm having this same issue as well, and would love to have the option to disable label deconfliction.

Just like to contribute my use case.

My main problem is with my feature points labels. The labels are long feature names.

My datasets are not dense, but the labels may overlap, this results in some points having their labels hidden. Looks weird on the map as it is hard for users to imagine that the point's label was hidden because its 'invisible label' overlapped with another label (thats visually far apart)

Another problem is when my labels are all placed on the right side of the point features outside its marker, but some of the right most features had their labels hidden cause of deconfliction with other features's label on the left side. It looks inconsistent and always hard to explain to users...