Question

ArcGIS Online Writer - Handling Layer Name Special Characters

  • 11 February 2020
  • 4 replies
  • 11 views

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Hi - Does anyone have some pointers on how to handle special characters in layer names against ArcGIS Online when using the in-built writers?

e.g. I have a layer on ArcGIS Online called Layer 1 (Addressing)

FME changes this to Layer 1 _Addressing_ which in-turn will cause the transformation to fail.

How does one handle this without changing the layer name as it has to be be this.

Thanks

 


4 replies

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Hi @jiriteach,

this has been an issue for longer. It is not (yet) supported.

I made an idea for to support special characters on Writer Feautre Types. You can vote for it HERE.

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Thanks. So there are no workarounds to this at the moment?

Hi @jiriteach,

I was trying to reproduce the scenario by first publishing a layer from ArcMap (10.7.1) to ArcGIS Online with () in the name, and ArcMap didn’t allow me to publish the service with (). Would it be possible for you to share some details on how your layers were originally created?

After a bit more investigation, according to Esri’s documentation (please refer to links to Esri’s website for layer names and table names), the best practice is to refrain from using certain characters in the names to avoid having problems publishing services or working with other data types and applications. I believe this is an expected behaviour, and unfortunately there is no workaround at this moment.

Meanwhile, you are very welcome to vote for the idea as lars_de_vries suggested and add your use case as an example to support it so that our development team will have more information about it. Thank you!

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Hi @jiriteach,

I was trying to reproduce the scenario by first publishing a layer from ArcMap (10.7.1) to ArcGIS Online with () in the name, and ArcMap didn’t allow me to publish the service with (). Would it be possible for you to share some details on how your layers were originally created?

After a bit more investigation, according to Esri’s documentation (please refer to links to Esri’s website for layer names and table names), the best practice is to refrain from using certain characters in the names to avoid having problems publishing services or working with other data types and applications. I believe this is an expected behaviour, and unfortunately there is no workaround at this moment.

Meanwhile, you are very welcome to vote for the idea as lars_de_vries suggested and add your use case as an example to support it so that our development team will have more information about it. Thank you!

Thanks. Yes publishing from ArcGIS Pro wont allow you to publish the service with (). This is due to these characters not being supported on the REST API which makes sense.

So when published, one can use Layer 1 Addressing which in turn on the REST API turns out as Layer_1_Addressing which is fine.

On ArcGIS Online, the layer name which is a friendly view of the layer can be changed to include () as characters. This does not change the service name.

The ArcGIS Online writer in FME seems to pick up the layer name as its defined on ArcGIS Online in the item details as opposed to the service which is why I am seeing this issue.

Good to know that its not supported. I can see why, perhaps the writer should pick up its names from the service opposed to the item title?

Cheers

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