I'm in the process of converting some existing custom Geocortex tools to ESRI WAB and JSAPI web tools.
For one of these, what I'm looking to recreate is the ability to:
- Query for and select a feature
- Generate a set of PDF maps centered on that feature with some pretty strict layout spec's.
- Finally prompt the user to download/save the PDFs as ZIP.
ESRI suggested that I look into using the Geoprocessing Widget to call a geoprocessing service that generates the maps. GP Widget looks promising.
QUESTION 1 - Is there another more appropriate out of the box offering? I've previously set up a custom print template on my hosting server, which worked fine. But what I need is a little more, I guess you'd say - complex. More like a fancy ultra print widget with the ability to pass in some parameters that are used as text in a print template.
Of course, I immediately started reading about arcpy.ConvertWebMapToArcGISProject(). The thought of working out my functionality in Python has a much great appeal than trying to whip up some jimu-jambalaya in WAB (sorry still not feeling the love).
QUESTION 2 - What is the easiest way for me to generate some sample JSON based off an actual web map of mine that I can use for testing with my geoprocessing code?
I could, of course, follow the guidelines here. But is there a simpler (lazier) way? Something similar to generating JSON output for a map service using the "?f=pjson." karate chop.
https://server.arcgisonline.com/arcgis/rest/services/Elevation/World_Hillshade_Dark/MapServer/0/?f=pjson
Hey, thanks for chiming in.