Enable Editing & Editor Tracking via Python API

[JohnMDye]

Still struggling a bit with the FeatureLayerManager class and when to use add_to_defintion, updateDefinition or delete_from_definition.

This time, I am trying to enable editing and editor tracking on a hosted feature service. I started by opening up the Chrome developer tools Network monitor, then on the Feature Layer settings page I manually checked the options 'Enable editing', 'Keep track of created and updated features' and 'Keep track of who created and last updated features', then hit Save. I then saw the console send an update_definition request.

I copied the form data and popped that into my update_definition method in my python notebook @ line 13

# Convert to a Spatially Enabled Dataframe
sdf = pd.DataFrame.spatial.from_xy(df, "lon_y", "lat_x", sr=4326)

print('Publishing layer...')
item = sdf.spatial.to_featurelayer('myFeatureLayer', tags=["test"], folder="My Folder")
print("Deleting interim fGDB...")
interimGDB = gis.content.get(gis.content.search(query="title:myFeatureLayer", item_type="File Geodatabase")[0].id).delete()
featureLayer = gis.content.get(item.id).layers[0]

print("Enabling Change Tracking...")
resp = featureLayer.manager.update_definition({
    "hasStaticData":False,
    "capabilities": "Query, Editing, Create, Update, Delete, ChangeTracking",
    "editorTrackingInfo":{
        "enableEditorTracking":True,
        "enableOwnershipAccessControl":False,
        "allowOthersToUpdate":True,
        "allowOthersToDelete":True,
        "allowOthersToQuery":True,
        "allowAnonymousToUpdate":True,
        "allowAnonymousToDelete":True}
    })
print(resp)
print(featureLayer.properties)

Reviewing the properties/definition however, I noticed that under nothing in the definition actually was updated, other than 'hasStaticData' which was changed from False to True. 'ChangeTracking' is not listed as a capability and the editorTrackingInfo array is not present in the updated definition.

[emedina · Accepted solution]

Hi, 

I noticed you're trying to enable editing on a FeatureLayer, but you want to be enabling it on the FeatureLayerCollection since it's a service-level property. Can you report back what happens when you update the flc?

The below works perfectly for me:

from arcgis import GIS
from arcgis.features import eatureLayerCollection

gis = GIS("https://www.arcgis.com", "username", "password")
url = "https://your/server/url/FeatureServer"
flc = FeatureLayerCollection(url, gis=gis)

edit_dict = {
    "hasStaticData":False,
    "capabilities": "Query, Editing, Create, Update, Delete, ChangeTracking",
    "editorTrackingInfo":{
        "enableEditorTracking":True,
        "enableOwnershipAccessControl":False,
        "allowOthersToUpdate":True,
        "allowOthersToDelete":True,
        "allowOthersToQuery":True,
        "allowAnonymousToUpdate":True,
        "allowAnonymousToDelete":True}
    }
flc.manager.update_definition(edit_dict)

[JohnMDye]

Thank you so much @emedina! With your guidance, I was able to get it to work. 

It's interesting, apparently  the gis parameter on FeatureLayerCollection is not so optional. If I left it off, I would get errors, even though the GIS object is already instantiated in a previous cell.

The other thing I thought was unexpected was that simply using the featureLayer.url would not suffice because that resolves to the first layer in the collection (eg. .../FeatureServer/0), but it actually needs the Collection so I had to use featureLayer.container.url.