Flex to JavaScript migration: Advice/Suggestions?

[JesseHopkins]

Hello,

I am a GIS Analyst for a county government, and I am in the initial planning stages of switching the county's web map from a (customized) Flex Viewer - based application to something that uses the JavaScript API and/or Web AppBuilder. I'm looking to maintain the advanced functionality of the current site all while leaving Flex behind, so something that is "out of the box" would most likely be "out of the question".

• Has anyone had experience in doing this?  If so, what risks were involved?
• What would be the most efficient way to do this?  I have a decent amount of experience with JS so custom coding is not a huge deal.
• At first, the application would need to keep similair widgets (do not want to change everything all at once!); is there the risk of losing some of our widgets and/or functionality when switching to a JS-based application?

Any advice on this switch would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

Jesse

[JeffRoland · Accepted solution]

Jesse,

My company made this transition over a year ago. We design JS based sites for county and city level governments, mostly tax assessors. Actually, "transition" is probably the wrong word to use. We kept all of the Flex based sites running while we built a solid JS/HTML5 platform. Then we switched each client over to the new site once their particular site was finished. Although most clients are assessors, most of them have customized specific functions and unique features, so it's definitely not out of the box.

I'm not the programmer for the sites but I think the JS API has a lot of widgets that cover many of the functions that the Flex widgets have. Are many of your widgets from the Flex builder or do you have customized code?

Anyway, if you want I could take a look at your current county site's functionality and let you know based on our experience. I can also send a link to some of our client's site to so you can see the functionality.

Jeff

[JesseHopkins]

Jeff,

Thanks for the quick response. The site itself… http://map.sccmo.org ..is based off of Larry Stout’s code from Hamilton County, IN. Most widgets on the current site are indeed from the Flex Builder, but almost all have been modified (with at least a few snippets of custom code). I have been communicating with Mr. Stout - for he too is making the switch, but would definitely appreciate it if you looked at the site’s functionality. The more input on the matter, the better. Anyways, happy holidays and thanks!

Jesse Hopkins

GIS Analyst

Department of Information Systems

St. Charles County Government

201 N. Second St., Suite 310

St. Charles, MO 63301

(636) 949-7900 ext. 3441

jhopkins@sccmo.org<mailto:jhopkins@sccmo.org>

[JeffRoland]

Jesse,

Your site certainly has a lot of functionality! I laughed when I heard that submarine ping sound. Some of the widgets such as the 'draw tools' are certainly in the JS samples but you will definitely have to customize them to get to look how you want them to look or act. They are very basic. You're probably aware of this but you can actually test out these samples on the developers site.

Like I said before, I'm not the web programmer so I can't say much more about the actual effort it took us to develop/customize our sites. But our programmer built the basic foundation of the site with a few tools that we knew our clients would need. As time went on he would add a new tool or functionality. In that respect it seems very scalable. You could take the same approach since you have a JS background.

I'm just going to throw this out there, since it's a part of our business. As a timesaver,  you could start with a solid platform like our site and then customize and add tools from there. Our sites have some tools/functionality that yours does not, for example: StreetView, Locate via gps, and Search History . Other functions like the draw tools you'd have to add yourself or we could develop for you. Check out the Iberia Parish Assessor's site: http://atlas.geoportalmaps.com/iberia/

Most of the site you can probably figure out. Street View is launched from the person icon when you do an identify on a parcel. Small parcels have a better result since it takes the centroid of the parcel to find the closest street view. Also note that the info panel has pictures/sketches. Let me know if you have any questions.

Jeff Roland

Sr. GIS Analyst

Geographic Computer Technologies, LLC.

Metairie, LA

[JordanBaumgardner]

You should have no issues with the functionality, the sdk's are very similar and your animations can be easily handled with libs like TweenJS. My biggest issues was giving up my compiler ; )