GUID field not editable

[Anonymous User]

I have a layer with a GUID field that I need to copy/paste the GlobalID from another layer into. But for some reason the GUID field is greyed out in the edit pop-up in the FlexViewer. In both the javascript (web app builder) and silverlight viewer this field is editable. Any idea why this is and how to enable editing on this field?

[RobertScheitlin__GISP]

Paul,

   The GlobalID field should not be editable in those other APIs. Flex API has it right that you can not edit a GlobalID field. The whole purpose of a GlobalID field is

Global ID and GUID data types store registry style strings consisting of 36 characters enclosed in curly brackets. These strings uniquely identify a feature or table row within a geodatabase and across geodatabases. This is how features are tracked in one-way and two-way geodatabase replication. Developers can use them in relationships or in any application requiring globally unique identifiers. In a relationship, if a Global ID field is the origin key, a GUID field must be the destination key. You can add global IDs to a dataset in a geodatabase by right-clicking it in the Catalog tree and clicking Add Global IDs. The geodatabase will then maintain these values automatically. You can create the GUID field as well, but you must maintain its values.

So how could it do its assigned purpose if you could copy a GUID from on feature to another yourself? ArcGIS is responsible for assigning the GUID when the feature is created.

[Anonymous User]

Hi Robert

Thanks for the reply. However I am not trying to edit the actual GlobalID field. I am trying to copy the GlobalID field from one layer and paste it into a GUID-type field in another layer to create the relationship between the two layers. The question is why the paste is not allowed? I can do this copy/paste directly in Arcmap no problems but not in Flex.

[RobertScheitlin__GISP]

Paul,

   The only thing I can think of is that the Flex API team choose to make the GlobalID filed non-editable to prevent users from entering invalid data into the GUID Field. Maybe Bjorn Svensson‌ can shed some more light on this.

Robert

[Anonymous User]

Thanks Robert - I'll wait to see if Bjorn has any comment.

[BjornSvensson · Accepted solution]

I think it might be possible to change that using skins if you are compiling with the Viewer source code.

It is also something we could consider for the next release.

https://github.com/Esri/arcgis-viewer-flex/issues

Longer story:  In Flex, the older MX Label can be made selectable, while Spark Label cannot.  This is an Adobe/Apache SDK optimization thing. When we migrated the flexviewer from MX to Spark, we often ended up with Spark labels (where you cannot select text).  Sometimes you want to be able to copy/select it, and for those cases you cannot use Spark Label. Instead you have to use something like RichText.

[Anonymous User]

Thanks for the reply Bjorn. We have been comparing using Flex/Silverlight/JS and all three currently seem to have issues preventing us from doing what we want! This particular issue rules out using Flex for this particular use at present, and I think long term we will look at using the JS solution as our preferred option once the issues with that are resolved.

Thanks again.

[BjornSvensson]

If you're comparing and trying to figure out which of the JS/Flex/SL to use, I would strongly recommend Javascript.  See http://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2014/02/21/esris-roadmap-for-web-developers/ .

Also for Web Builder, did you know that the latest beta is now available as part of ArcGIS Online: http://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2014/09/24/whats-new-in-arcgis-online-september-2014/

[Anonymous User]

Yes, certainly javascript is the way we intend to go but we have run into a separate unrelated issue with javascript that is preventing us from using it right at the moment so I was hoping the Flex or Silverlight viewers would do 'out-of-the-box' what we needed in the interim.

I am following up the javascript issue separately.

Cheers.

-Paul

[Venkata_RaoTammineni]

GUID's as ID's | ArcGIS Blog