Editor widget for community consultation app

[TimLeigh]

I'd like to use the editor widget as part of a web app which will be used for community consultation (basically point feature comments on the proposed development).

Is there a best practice design to ensure that users are not able to edit comments from other users as well as allowing the moderation of comments?

[IsaiahAguilera · Accepted solution]

If I am understanding you correctly you are going to have a separate point for each comment?

If so you could have two feature services, one with only "create" enabled and the other with full access.  Both would be using the same feature class only the first service would only allow you to make additions or in your case new comments.  You would have to implement a way for your moderator to access the other service which would allow him to change/remove comments.  Perhaps using a separate config.xml for you moderator and he could access the site using the "?config=moderator.xml" at the end of the URL.  Or use a login system to get at the separate config.

If unsure this is the help link
http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.2/#/Editor_permissions_for_feature_services/015400000393...

I would say use the identity manager and you could do "Ownership-based access" but that would require a login for each user and considering this will be a community app I would think you would want to avoid having them login.

Hope this helps,

[TimLeigh]

Thanks Isaiah, that gives me some ideas.

To answer your question, yes there would be one point per comment. The main question I have is how to prevent users from modifying features created by other users. It looks like this will need to be implemented as custom code using a session id or something similar as I agree that the identity manager would be a complex solution as I don't plan to have individual logins for each user.

Thanks

Tim

[IsaiahAguilera]

Tim,
In the mean time I think the fastest route would be to uncheck the "delete" and "update" boxes in the service capabilities section of your map-service.  This would allow the creation and posting of comments, but once submitted it would not allow deletion or modification to that feature. So others or even the posting user could not change or remove comments once submitted. Then you could moderate the data on the back end or have a separate service pointing to the same feature layer that has deletion and updating enabled.  This would only take a few minutes to implement and does not use identity manager so it wouldn't require a login. You could still use a login for a moderator type person but that would only be when he wanted to change or remove comments.