Cartographers will often exaggerate the natural scale of a mapped feature to help it communicate something of its nature. Some examples are vertical exaggeration of terrain or the very existence of point symbols (cities aren’t actually that big). We embellish for effect. Making a river a bit wider at its mouth, where it meets the sea or a lake, is an echo of a general phenomena of river deltas. But we are usually working with line features when it comes to rivers in a GIS. How can we imbue a bit of riverine character and a sense of flow direction into river lines in ArcGIS Pro?
We’ll use the global tapered polygon effect! Here’s how, in two minutes…
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0:00 Intro illustration
0:19 Tapered polygon effect
0:43 Giving the new (tapered) river polygons a fill
0:58 How to reverse those backwards rivers
And, because the full riches of the ArcGIS Geoprocessing library is unknowable, I wasn’t even aware of the glorious flip line tool (which lets you select all the backwards lines and reverse their node order in one fell swoop) until Tommy Fauvell let me know moments after publishing this video. Cheers to geoprocessing, and to friends! Relatedly, here’s Craig Williams showing me how to taper rivers.
Happy mapping! John
Russell, can you share any information on plans to enable this for Feature Layers that are not “hosted” but are “registered” ArcGIS Server services? Is there a realistic chance of that happening? That would help us plan ahead. Great blog post, thank you.
looking into this and will post a new reply when I have some info for you.
How will Full-Text Field Indexes work for feature layers we do not own? If an index is created when the search is added, assume you need to be the owner of the feature layer.
What is the feature layer is either a Living Atlas layer, or another agencies rest service. What is the best way to add a search to those layers?
Indexes are built by owners or admins bc this info is added to the service definition. The non-index case where the index does not exist on the service will use the search without the leading wildcard.
Thank for for the fast response.
For the non-index cases does the lack of leading wildcard mean you are unable to search “Baltimore Post Office“.
When the full name is “Highlandtown Station Baltimore Post Office”, previously we have used contain for this, recently have seen some issues with the search results.
Yup you would have to add the % manually in front of the “Baltimore Post” Office to get the “Highlandtown Station Baltimore Post Office” result.
Awesome, great to know thank you.
I wish there was an option to automatically add the “%” in the search configuration options. The general public would not think to add it if they are just trying to find a Post Office.
Adding the indexing is only an option, if I own the data.
Is this something that is implemented automatically when we create a hosted feature service? Also, you mentioned Instant Apps and the application settings of a web map – is there documentation on how to do this in the settings of a web map? What about Experience Builder?
The index gets generated either when search is configured in the web map settings or instant app layer based search. No changes were made to the feature search authoring experience in map settings. Once you setup your layer the index gets built behind the scenes. Experience Builder will support it in the next release. https://doc.arcgis.com/en/arcgis-online/create-maps/configure-feature-search.htm
The Search widget doesn’t work in our maps since the November release. Or it works as ‘starts with’ while the search is configured as ‘contains’. I could repair this in a few maps by deleting/re-adding the search on layer settings, but this trick doesn’t work with most maps. This is really annoying and confusing for our users, is it meant to be so? This is not documented, and our local distributor didn’t seem to be aware of the problem neither. Are we really the only ones experiencing this?
Yes this change switched from using the double wildcard to a single wildcard at the end of the searched characters. Adding a % at the beginning will restore the same search but this is something we want to move away from because this can cause stability issues for your content depending on the number of active searches taking place, num of characters being used and the num of characters in the field rows the searched characters are being compared against. You can add a full text index either through making a change through the search settings config panel or if… Read more »
Hi Russell, the first option doesn’t work in most cases, so I’d like to hear about the second one, thank you.
When you go to the addToDefinition on the rest endpoint of your Hosted Feature Layer (not the top level but the individual sub layers) and no other Full-Text index exists you will remove the text already in the text box and enter this below with the fields you want to be used. Name must be unique. { “name”: “fulltext_indx”, “indexType”: “FullText”, “fields”: “FeatureCategory” (coma separated fields you want to have an index on, only one fulltext index per layer) } If a fulltext index already exists that needs to be deleted from the definition first before adding new field indexes.… Read more »
It just doesn’t work with a layer with views, I can’t use addToDefinition.
Error message:
Adding the index works for another layer without views, I can see the index is added when printing the properties, but the search still doesn’t work in the map, even after deleting the map’s search conditions – saving – re-adding the search conditions.
So what do I do now? This really sucks, the search widget was working perfectly before, this is not an enhancement but a regression for us.
For the above issue can you log a support ticket for us to investigate and track? Please include a sample of the feature value you are trying to search for.
The change had to be made b/c the old search method could impact your entire orgs performance and stability.
Hi Russell, I have a ticket logged with my local distributor since 25 November (#03206890). They say they’re in touch with Esri US. Do you have access to it?
Yup I can see it.
For the view case – the index exists on the parent layer not the view. So you wouldn’t need to build the index on the view layer. If you do this in a map you can see in the network the addToDef gets applied to the parent and not the view. The view leverages the FT index and you will see in the search widget the query going through the view using the FT index.
I’m not using the views. But the feature layer I’d like to update (and can’t) has related views.
And anyway, the search still doesn’t work with a layer with a full text index successfully added.
Will need to see the map, layer and the search you are trying to perform.
Your comment earlier mentioned you are using it with views and trying to add it to a view.
I said it doesn’t work with a layer with views. How could I give you access to the maps and layers?
Add them to the support case or create a post on Esri ArcGIS Online community which we can use to further look at the issue. Share the content to a group and invite russell_jsapi into it.
I’ve invited you to a group with the maps and layers, but not sure how I can add them to the case. And should I keep on writing here, or via the case, or email?
Create a post under the ArcGIS Online community and I’ll catch it and jump in. I just need to know the map and layer being searched. Thanks!
OK, done. Thanks!
9/25/2023 – Russell I have enabled search on my “Web Map”. This then automatically as noted in documentation enables that search in the “Field Apps”. I see documentation that says it also instantly enables that search in the new apps. I have an “Instant – Side Bar App” and the search bar shows my configurable words from the “Web Map” in that App where I put “Hint Text – Search My Data” but nothing returns. Is there still some disconnect? I wanted to avoid configuring the search in the “Instant – Side Bar App”
Solved it: In the “Instant – Side Bar App” I had to enable “Search Configuration – All Sources”. Otherwise it was just searching my top layer.