Book Image

Building Web and Mobile ArcGIS Server Applications with JavaScript ??? Second Edition - Second Edition

By : Eric Pimpler, Mark Lewin
Book Image

Building Web and Mobile ArcGIS Server Applications with JavaScript ??? Second Edition - Second Edition

By: Eric Pimpler, Mark Lewin

Overview of this book

The ArcGIS API for JavaScript enables you to quickly build web and mobile mapping applications that include sophisticated GIS capabilities, yet are easy and intuitive for the user. Aimed at both new and experienced web developers, this practical guide gives you everything you need to get started with the API. After a brief introduction to HTML/CSS/JavaScript, you'll embed maps in a web page, add the tiled, dynamic, and streaming data layers that your users will interact with, and mark up the map with graphics. You will learn how to quickly incorporate a broad range of useful user interface elements and GIS functionality to your application with minimal effort using prebuilt widgets. As the book progresses, you will discover and use the task framework to query layers with spatial and attribute criteria, search for and identify features on the map, geocode addresses, perform network analysis and routing, and add custom geoprocessing operations. Along the way, we cover exciting new features such as the client-side geometry engine, learn how to integrate content from ArcGIS.com, and use your new skills to build mobile web mapping applications. We conclude with a look at version 4 of the ArcGIS API for JavaScript (which is being developed in parallel with version 3.x) and what it means for you as a developer.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Chapter 2. Creating Maps and Adding Layers

We all have to start somewhere when learning a new programming language or Application Programming Interface (API). The same applies to creating web mapping applications with the ArcGIS API for JavaScript. Not only do you need to understand some basic JavaScript concepts but you also need to have a grasp of HTML, CSS, and of course the ArcGIS API for JavaScript, which is actually built on top of the Dojo JavaScript framework. That's a lot to put on your plate at once, so in this chapter we'll have you create a very basic application that will serve as a foundation which you can build on in the coming chapters.

Mimicry is an excellent way to learn programming skills, so in this chapter I'm just going to have you type in the code that you see and we'll provide some explanation along the way. We'll save the detailed descriptions of the code for later chapters.

To get your feet wet with the ArcGIS API for JavaScript you're going to create a simple mapping...