In this chapter, we will cover the following recipes:
As you have seen if you completed the previous chapter, ArcGIS Online is an amazing resource. It provides access to a wealth of data and tools that can greatly enhance the abilities of your GIS. But, can you add your own data and maps to your content, or are you limited to the content that is already there?
ArcGIS Online does allow you to publish your own content. This can take many forms, including:
For a full list of all the items you can add to your ArcGIS Online content, go to https://doc.arcgis.com/en/arcgis-online/reference/supported-items.htm.
Depending on the content you are attempting to publish, there are different methods you can use to publish it. Files can be directly uploaded to ArcGIS Online...
ArcGIS Online can be used as a repository for GIS data and files. Putting these files up in ArcGIS Online allows you to access the information anywhere you have an internet connection, much like Google Drive or DropBox. It also allows you to use that data to create web maps and share them with others. This can greatly increase the overall flexibility of you GIS by making the data available whenever you need it, and not just when you are back in the office.
If you are going to upload and publish files to ArcGIS Online, some of them may need to be prepared or configured before you upload them. For example, a shapefile must be compressed into a single ZIP file before you are able to publish it to ArcGIS Online. This is because each shapefile actually consists of multiple files. If you remember from Chapter 2, Creating and Storing Data, a single shapefile will consist of a SHP, SHX, and DBF file at a minimum. Additional files such as a PRJ, SBN, and SBX...
Now that you have uploaded a shapefile and created a feature layer based on the shapefile, let’s look at a CSV file. You can upload a CSV or TXT file to your content just as you did the shapefile. Because it is a single file, there is no need to ZIP it before you upload it to your ArcGIS Online content.
When you add a CSV file to your content, it is typically used in one of two ways. The first is just to allow others to download the file or to use it as a standalone table. The file is not used to create a layer in a map or scene. In that case, you do not need to worry about formatting.
However, if you want to create a layer in a map or scene from the data in the CSV file, it will need to be formatted to support that operation. Here are the formatting requirements for a CSV file if you want to use it to create a layer. This also applies to a TXT file:
You have now experienced how you are able to publish files to ArcGIS Online. This includes GIS files such as shapefiles, and non-GIS files such as CSV files. So far, you have done this without using ArcGIS Pro. However, you can publish content to ArcGIS Online directly from ArcGIS Pro.
ArcGIS Pro can not only use content which has been published to ArcGIS Online, but it can also be used to author content. Similar to how you published the shapefile to ArcGIS Online, you can publish a layer from a map in ArcGIS Pro as a layer package. The layer package will contain all the layer property settings you configure in ArcGIS Pro, along with the data. The data referenced by the layer can be stored in various formats, including geodatabase feature classes, shapefiles, spreadsheets, and more. This is useful when you need to share information with someone that is not on your network or that does not have direct access to your GIS data.
In this recipe, you will...
Publishing layer packages to ArcGIS Online is extremely useful if you need to share data with someone that needs to have access to the entire dataset and to work on a copy of the data. This allows them to run different scenarios, perform different analyses, and make changes to the data without actually impacting the data sharing through ArcGIS Online. What if you wanted to share a layer to ArcGIS Online that you wanted included in a web map, which users would access through the ArcGIS Online Web Map Viewer, or other custom web or mobile applications? A layer package would not allow that. What you need is a web layer.
Web layers allow you to publish a single layer so that it may be added to a web map. You add the layer using the same process you used in Chapter 12, Introducing ArcGIS Online, and the Creating a simple web map in ArcGIS Online recipe. Once added to a web map, you can then visualize it using the Web Map Viewer application or even incorporate...
Now that you know how to publish a layer as either a layer file or a web layer, is it possible to publish an entire map to ArcGIS Online? Well, of course you can. Just like a layer, you can publish a map as as map package or as as a web map.
Publishing a map as a map package uses the same basic procedure as publishing a layer package. It packages the entire map including layer properties and data into a single MAPX file. You can then upload that to ArcGIS Online, so others can download it just as they would a layer package. While certainly a valuable tool in your arsenal, it does have limited use. Publishing a web map offers much more flexibility.
A web map can be accessed and used multiple ways. You can add it to a project in ArcGIS Pro, or incorporate it into a web application so it can be used via a web browser and be part of a mobile application. Depending on the settings you configure, users might be able query, print, edit, and download the data using any or all of...
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