You might have heard the buzz about the new focused, web-based editing app in ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Web Editor. We want to help you tap into the power of this new app. In this article, we’ll walk through selecting features using the Select by attributes tool. Select by attributes is a powerful tool for building simple queries to quickly find the data you need. Whether you’re searching for specific data or analyzing patterns, it can help hone your selections in no time. Let’s take a closer look.
Selection in ArcGIS Web Editor
One of the first steps in any editing workflow is locating the data you want to edit. Web Editor provides several options for selecting features, along with tools for refining selections.
The Selection toolbar is a dynamic toolset for creating and refining selections on the map. Select features using interactive polygon, rectangle, or lasso tools. In addition, there are tools for adding to or removing from the existing selection.
The Selection pane is a valuable resource for exploring and fine-tuning selections. In essence, its a panel where you can view and manage your selections, zoom to features, view pop-ups, and more.
The table offers a convenient way to view, sort, and select records in a tabular format. You can filter the table to show all the records, or only the selected records.
Last but not least, the Select by attributes tool is a powerful feature for building queries to easily find the data you need. With Select by attributes, you can specify attribute values or expressions to filter and select features based on specific criteria. Let’s walk through an example.
Select by Attributes
Imagine we want to locate counties in Colorado that have between 500,000 and 1 million inhabitants. Select by attributes is the tool for the job. It lets us select features based on specific criteria, such as all the buildings above a certain height, the inspections performed within a specific time period, or counties in Colorado within a certain population range.
Step-by-Step Guide
On the dark content toolbar, click Selection 
to open the Selection pane.
Click Select by attributes to open the query builder.
Choose a layer for the selection.
- Layer: Counties
Set the Selection type.
- Selection type: New
Create an expression by selecting a field, an operator, and a value, like so:
When the expression is good to go, click Apply.
The number of selected features is indicated on the right side of the Selection toolbar.
But wait, we’re not done. We still need to narrow the selection down to Counties that meet the population criteria we set. There are several appoaches for refining the selection.
- To build on an existing expression, click Add new and create a new expression, or group of expressions.
- To keep an existing selection and add on, change the Selection type to Add to, then create an expression.
- To remove features from an existing selection, change the Selection type to Subtract from, then create an expression.
In this example, we’ll build on the existing expresssion. We’ll add two more conditions to identify counties within a specific population range.
Pro Tip: When using more than one expression, set the query parameters to determine whether to select features that meet all of the conditions or features that meet any of the conditions.
Explore Selected Features
When we’re happy with the selection, there are several ways to explore the selected features. We can view selected features on the map, browse them in the Selection pane, or view tabular data using the table.
Summary
We’ve just explored approaches for selecting and browsing records inside ArcGIS Web Editor, a new, focused editing app with various tools to create and refine selections. In this article, we focused on the Select by attributes tool, a powerful tool that empowers you to quickly find the data that is most relevant to your editing workflow. The variety of selection tools available in Web Editor make it easy to locate and explore data. We hope you’ve gained some insights that enhance your data exploration and editing workflows in ArcGIS Web Editor.
To learn more about using ArcGIS Web Editor, visit:
- ArcGIS Web Editor Help
- Blog Article – ArcGIS Web Editor Your New Data Management Best Friend
- Blog Article – ArcGIS Web Editor- 5 Editing Tips and Tricks
- Introducing ArcGIS Web Editor – a short video overview of ArcGIS Web Editor
- ArcGIS Web Editor on Esri Community– Contribute ideas, submit questions, & build relationships
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