Custom Web Maps: Introduction to the ArcGIS API for Javascript

1. Introduction - Technology overview:

   1. Server architecture — host machine, Internet, client machine

   2. Software architecture — web server (Apache), Javascript API library (Esri's Javascript API), GIS application server (for my own map data) or 3rd-party GIS data (Google, Esri, DASC) (ArcGIS Server and ImageServer), client application (IE, Chrome, Firefox, mobile devices)

   3. Business/user application — sample: places of interest ("where in Kansas?" locations) and DMV locations

   4. Development tools — Textpad for code developent, and Firefox with Firebug plugin for debugging, plus Internet Explorer and Chrome for testing

2. Links

   • Esri's reference pages: http://help.arcgis.com/EN/webapi/javascript/arcgis/index.html

   • Instruction and Javascript reference: http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/

   • The Dojo Toolkit: http://www.dojotoolkit.org/documentation/

   • The Firebug plugin for Firefox: http://getfirebug.com/

   • DASC's ArcGIS Server explorer "Giselle": http://giselle.kgs.ku.edu/arcgis/rest/services

   • DASC's ImageServer explorer: http://imageserver.kansasgis.org/arcgis/rest/services/

3. Building a web map:

   1. Sketching out the page

   2. Adding the Javascript API library

   3. Adding map services

   4. Adding a point to the map

   5. Zooming in to a location

   6. Adding ImageServer layers

   7. Using an ArcGIS point layer

   8. Identifying points and retrieving tabular data

4. Questions (if we have time - but feel free to catch me later at the DASC booth).

Slideshow

Download files (kam2010-javasciptAPIintro.zip)