How to: Color-coded Map/Exposure map based on Data

[PattabiramanMeenakshisundaram]

Hi,
I am a beginner and I started off with a trial version of 'ArcGIS for Developer'. I wanted to show the State map with county borders, color code each County based on the Data range. For example, 1-20 (of data in red), 20-50 in blue etc.
Could you please point me to the online resources that can help me achieve this?
These are what I gathered so far.
I found something similar for Google maps from Stackoverflow
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5314258/google-map-color-coding-countries-based-on-marker-value

A link to download county boundaries.
http://nationalatlas.gov/atlasftp.html?openChapters=chpbound#chpbound

Any help to get me started is appreciated.
Thanks

[AnttiKajanus1]

I think that you have 2 different solutions in this:

1) Define your symbols in our map (webmap if you are using those, http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/arcgisonline/index.html#//010q0000009w000000, and if you are implementing custom application you can use ClassBreaksRenderer from the API ie. https://developers.arcgis.com/en/javascript/jssamples/renderer_class_breaks.html)

2) Define symbology to the service but you need to create service from tool that supports that. I think you can use atleast ArcMap and Esri Maps for Office to handle it but using developers.arcgis.com don't have that option.

Let me know if you need more help with this.

Edit:
If i understood correctly with fast look on the download page link, you are publishing services from shapefiles. I guess you are uploading shapefiles to ArcGIS Online and then publishing it to service. If you do it like this way, you need to define renderers in your application (option 1)

If you have access to ArcGIS Desktop (ArcMap) then you can define renderer directly to your service and publish it to ArcGIS Online. (option 2)

[PattabiramanMeenakshisundaram]

Antti,
My requirement is exactly similar to an election map - showing 'Red/Blue' counties based on the total votes polled, for a given state.

This needs to be embedded in a web page and would prefer a solution based on Arcgis developer online, though I can install the Desktop version.
Could you please confirm my understanding?
1. Overlay the state map with a shapefile that provides county borders.
2. need to add a feature layer ( referring to the example of the ClassBreakRenderer you shared) that is specific to my usecase. If I can build a feature layer, do I need to do the step 1?

Thanks for providing references.

[AnttiKajanus1]

Depending the use case (and data update interval) you might also add shapefile directly to WebMap without hosting it as FeatureService. If WebMap (and web application templates) has functionality that you are going to need in your web page, using it instead of custom application might be good way to go. http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcgisonline/demos/video21

To publish Feature Service from shapefile : http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/arcgisonline/index.html#//010q0000006m000000

After you have published that you can refer that from WebMap (http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/arcgisonline/index.html#/About_using_web_maps/010q00000022000000...) or from you custom web application.

Note that you can embed WebMaps that are hosted in ArcGIS Online in your own sites if needed (http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/arcgisonline/index.html#/Embedding_web_maps/010q00000095000000/)

If you are using same features in multiple appications, then it should be published as a feature service and your webmap / custom application then references to it.

[AnttiKajanus1]

Here is one blog post about features vs feature services : http://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2013/02/19/about-features-and-feature-services/

[PattabiramanMeenakshisundaram]

Thank you for all the references and links.

[AnttiKajanus1]

Thank you for all the references and links.

My pleasure.

Remember to hit question answered when you think that you got things rolling.

[PattabiramanMeenakshisundaram]

Hi,

In addition to the above pointers, I got a step-step instruction from Stackoverflow
http://tinyurl.com/countylevelshp.
The state I am interested in is 'FL'. 

The only deviation from the steps outlined was:I could only find the layer package from ArcGis online. So instead of importing the layer file, imported the shape file.

Inside ArcMap also I did all the steps but could not select the COUNTY_FIPS (as it is not one of the field defined in the shape file). The spatial join file got created but the output looks the same as that of the Shape file I imported.

Google Fusion has an example similar to the above requirement.
http://gmaps-samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/fusiontables/adv_fusiontables.html
Is there any equivalent in ArcGis, as for my requirement, I do not want the map to scale any further than county boundaries.
Hope my question is clear>
Thanks

[PattabiramanMeenakshisundaram]

Remember to hit question answered when you think that you got things rolling.

Could not find the 'question answered' link.
My last question was not related to the original thread that got answered. will be posting my question in a aseparate thread.
Thanks