Very good question Sil_! We have a pressing need to be able to do more with Image Services in web apps too.
I love Experience Builder as a modern replacement for Web App Builder, as it provides a vast range of tools and UI elements which make it extremely flexible for no-code-application development and, for background, I should add that we haven’t got the resource to develop custom apps using the ArcGIS API for JavaScript (or get them developed).
Here’s my understanding of what you can and can’t do in the various ArcGIS web apps at the moment (August 2023) – if you come to the conclusion that Experience Builder needs more Image Service Support please also see my previous ArcGIS Experience Builder Idea under https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-experience-builder-ideas/expb-working-with-image-services/idi-p... :
- ArcGIS Experience Builder currently does not support (much) user interaction with what makes image services interesting and compelling – although of course you can display a web map with an image service added to it.
- ArcGIS Web App Builder is/was not a lot better than Experience Builder, in that respect, when you use it out-of-the-box, but with some creative tricks and elbow grease, users can be enabled to filter from the various rasters in an image service that has many slices, for example.
- In ArcGIS Web App Builder Developer Edition, it was possible to add the ‘WABIS’ widgets, a set of widgets made by Esri to work with Image Services https://github.com/Esri/WAB-Image-Services-Widgets . Those widgets were a godsend to us and we have used them in combination with the above filtering (using out-of-the-box filter widgets). An example can be seen here, where users can interact with hundreds of satellite image derived scientific rasters, selecting different parameters which are rendered according to server-based raster functions etc. https://pensive-lamport-e9f725.netlify.app/, all from a single image service. The application can be used by folks in central and regional government and scientists for getting crucial science output that we need to deliver. It’s not the smoothest user experience, unfortunately, as users have to chose products from different widgets so the filtering and rendering can work appropriately.
- With Esri’s retirement plans for Web App Builder ( https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/web-appbuilder/announcements/arcgis-web-appbuilder-roadmap... ), Web App Builder Developer Edition is now no longer a viable option for any future developments.
- While Experience Builder does not currently have any widgets specifically for, say, allowing user interaction with Image Service Rendering or Mosaicking, our hope was that perhaps there would be an Instant App that we could use for such purpose, alas: there’s only a single Instant App at present for use with Image Services, the “Imagery Viewer” available here https://doc.arcgis.com/en/instant-apps/latest/create-apps/imagery-viewer.htm . Like all Instant Apps, the Imagery Viewer has very limited scope by design and can’t allow user interaction with rendering, product selection etc. - It can certainly be useful if you have a timeline of images where a user needs to choose from but it’s not sufficient for some other uses case that are perfectly reasonable for image services.
In summary, none of the current out-of-the-box web apps and application builders seem to be really ‘proficient’ at making the most of Image Service capabilities.
Here are a few more options:
- The most recent release of the ‘modern’ MapViewer, both in ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Online, feature ways for someone who creates the web map to interact with the built-in capabilities of Image Services:
There are settings for working with Processing Templates, Image Display Order, Multidimensional Rasters, settings for Filters and for supplying a web map with a time-enabled service using a time-slider.
Unfortunately, once those options have been defined, say, for a public app, users won’t be able to modify them. That’s just the way the MapViewer works, nothing wrong with it, but it means that a MapViewer app doesn’t cut the mustard when it comes to letting a user choose from the different products in multidimensional services. - The above-mentioned Esri WABIS widgets are open source. Being based on ArcGIS JS API V3, they would have to be ported to JS API V4 and wrapped into Experience Builder Developer Edition Widgets to work. As of ArcGIS Enterprise 11.0, they can be referenced in an ArcGIS Enterprise-based Experience Builder app, after registering them. I could probably spend until retirement trying to modify the code. In the end it may even work.
Everything needed to build proper interaction seems to be there in terms of ArcGIS JavaScript SDK 4– there are some really nice examples in the developer documentation. The MapViewer web map ‘specification’ apparently also undergoes a bit of change, I am guessing, so web maps ‘know’ how to deal with what’s in an Image Service. The Raster Analytics capabilities which are now available in ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Online are right up there in terms of what a user can expect to do in raster analysis.
ArcGIS Image for ArcGIS Online is an incredible new feature and the Image Service capabilities make for super-powerful delivery mechanisms for sophisticated and demanding content.
Unfortunately, the readily available web apps for public data delivery and interaction do not really support most of the capabilities available in the Image Service API.
I would be immensely interested to hear from Esri what the plans for the future are in the “Widgets and Apps for ArcGIS Image Services” space.
It may seem a bit ‘niche’ to some, but for others it’s business-as-usual and I would be rather disappointed if there wasn’t a plan fully enable this. How about WABIS widgets for EXB = EXBIS?
Thanks,
Tilmann
@Richard_Purkis @Jianxia @PeterBecker @JianLange
