Esri ArcGIS Online (AGOL) Feature Service Writer Parameters

Service Connection

These are the credentials required to log into ArcGIS Online.

Constraints

Note  Writers created before FME 2022.1 will have a single Feature Service parameter which is used to specify the Feature Service.

Feature Service

This parameter specifies the Feature Service for which to write features. Click the Browse button to obtain a list of all Feature Services accessible by the current user. A connection window appears while the system browses all accessible folders and groups for Feature Services. You can select only one Feature Service.

This parameter takes the form of folder or group name/feature service name, and is optionally suffixed with the Feature Service Item ID if the name is ambiguous. Note that a group name can only be used to specify an existing feature service. If you wish to share a new feature service with a group, you can first create it in your own account and then share it to the group with the Esri ArcGIS Online Connector.

Item Source

This parameter is used to determine whether the feature service to write to will be specified using a user folder or a group.

  • User Content (default) – Select this option when writing to a user folder. This option enables the Feature Service Handling parameter.

  • Group – Select this option only when writing to an existing feature service.

Folder

This parameter is used when Item Source is set to User Content and specifies the name of the target folder for the feature service.

The default value of / (forward slash) represents the root user folder. Clicking the Browse button will display a list of a user’s folders.

Group

This parameter is used when Item Source is set to Group and specifies the ID of a group for an existing feature service. Clicking the Browse button will display a list of the groups a user belongs to, as well as all the groups in their organization.

Feature Service Handling

This parameter is only available when Item Source is set to User Content.

  • Use Existing – This is the default value. The Selected Feature Service parameter can be used to specify the existing feature service.
  • Create If Needed – If the specified Feature Service does not exist in the specified folder, the ArcGIS Online Feature Service Writer will create it. The Feature Service Name and If Feature Service Exists parameters can be used to specify the feature service. Refer to the Feature Service Creation sections in ARCGISPORTALFEATURES or ARCGISONLINEFEATURES for details regarding this procedure.
  • Overwrite Existing – If the specified Feature Service exists, it will be overwritten. The Selected Feature Service parameter can be used to specify the existing feature service. If the feature service specified does not exist at runtime, this will create a feature service.
Tip  
  • When creating or overwriting a Feature Service, the feature operation of all the writer’s feature types should be set to Insert. Note that the Feature Type Handling option should not be set to Truncate Existing.
  • If you wish to share a new Feature Service with a group, you can first create it in your own account and then share it to the group using the the Esri ArcGIS Online Connector.

Selected Feature Service

This parameter is only available when Feature Service Handling is set to Overwrite Existing or Use Existing.

This parameter is used to specify a single feature service. Clicking the Browse button will display a list of all the feature services in the selected group or user folder. Once selected, the Feature Service Item ID will be appended to the name of the feature service.

Feature Service Name

This parameter is only available when Feature Service Handling is set to Create if Needed.

Enter the name of a feature service. If the feature service does not exist in the user folder, it will be created.

An Item ID can optionally be appended to the feature service name. Assuming the correct user folder is selected, these are all valid ways to specify an existing feature service with name My Feature Service and ID 567aba67c25cb60ee159d3fbe2b16eff:

  • My Feature Service(567aba67c25cb60ee159d3fbe2b16eff)
  • (567aba67c25cb60ee159d3fbe2b16eff)
  • My Feature Service
Tip  
  • When creating a new Feature Service, provide only the name of the new Feature Service.
  • If you manually enter an ID, you must enclose it within parentheses. Providing a Feature Service Item ID will override the destination specified by the User Folder or Group parameters. The provided ID must match a Feature Service item on ArcGIS Online; otherwise, the writer will fail when the translation is run.

If Feature Service Exists

This parameter is only available when Feature Service Handling is set to Create if Needed.

This parameter controls behavior when the feature service specified with Feature Service Name exists.

  • Use Existing – This is the default value. If the feature service exists, write to it without modifying the layer schema.
  • Overwrite Existing – If the specified Feature Service exists, it will be overwritten.

Publishing

Target WKID

This optional parameter specifies the target spatial reference of the published Feature Service. It’s only applicable when the writer creates a Feature Service.

The default value is WKID 102100. This value corresponds to the Web Mercator projection, which is the standard projection used to create XYZ tiled web maps. If not specified, the server default is used (which is typically also WKID 102100).

Advanced

This parameter specifies the maximum number of features that may be present in a single write request to the server. This limit applies to Insert, Update, Delete, Upsert, and truncation. The writer will issue a request to the server whenever a single feature type accumulates the number of output features specified by this parameter.

Note  This parameter is only applicable when writing to an existing Feature Service. If the Feature Service was created in the same translation, then this parameter is ignored.

This parameter is useful for avoiding server timeouts or HTTP 500 responses that may result from long write operations.

If this parameter is not provided, it defaults to 1000. If the operation is set to Upsert, the parameter value used will be either 10000 or the user-provided value, whichever one is larger.

This parameter specifies whether Global IDs are to be used as the primary key for write operations, instead of Object IDs. This behavior may be necessary to use some ArcGIS features, such as Feature Service Sync.

When this parameter is set to Yes, it remains possible to insert features without a value for the Global ID attribute.

If this parameter is not provided, it defaults to No.

Note  A warning is logged if this parameter is set to Yes, but the Feature Service created during the translation has feature types that did not define a Global ID attribute. An error is raised if this parameter is set to Yes, but the server or Feature Service does not support Global IDs.

When Use Global IDs is set to Yes, this parameter determines the behavior during Insert/Upsert operations when a feature without a Global ID value is encountered.

  • Yes – An error is raised if the feature does not have a Global ID. This is the default behavior for workspaces created before FME 2020.2.
  • No – Auto-generated Global IDs are assigned to features without one.

When Asynchronous Writes is set to Yes, the writer will send write requests without waiting for the status of the previous write request. For translations with many features, this can reduce the time that the workspace spends running. However, when in this mode, the status of write requests made will not be reported until all features have been written.

The value of this parameter is only used when writing to – not overwriting – an existing feature server. If the writer is creating a new feature service/overwriting an existing feature service, then this parameter will not be used.

  • Yes – Perform writes in asynchronous mode. The feature service being written to must support asynchronous writes.
  • No (default) – The status of each write request is reported before a new write request is filed.

When Asynchronous Writes is set to Yes, this option can be used to set whether the writer will poll for the status of each async write request after all features have been created.

  • Yes (default) – The writer polls for statuses up to the timeout period defined. If a single write request failed, the translation will stop. Write requests which are still pending will not be treated as failures.
  • No – The status of write requests is not reported. If write requests have failed, these will not be logged and the translation will proceed.

When Report Asynchronous Write Statuses is set to Yes, this parameter determines the maximum number of seconds the writer will poll for the status of write requests.

Default: 300

  • Yes – The writer creates new Feature Services by writing all features to a File Geodatabase and uploading it to the server. This was the standard behavior for all new feature service creation prior to FME 2024.0.

    • Note  

    When this parameter is set to Yes, any field aliases will be ignored and will not be specified.

  • No (default) – After the Feature Service is created and layers are added, features will be added in batches as when writing to an existing feature service. When overwriting existing feature services, all layers and tables will be removed from the feature service before the new feature layers are added.