Append (Feature Service)

Description

ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Enterprise hosted feature services support the append operation, a high-performance API capable of handling large volumes of data that has the ability to upsert data.

Upsert

Upsert is a combination of insert and update, driven by the featureId . Upsert is used to add new features and update existing features at the same time. If a feature in the source data matches an existing feature in the destination layer, the existing feature is updated with the values from the source. If there is no match, a new feature is created based on the values from the source.

The append operation currently supports featureId of type ObjectId and GlobalId . The target layer must have a destination field of one of these types.

Unique index on source data featureId

The destination objectId or globalId fields do not need to be mapped to source fields of the same type. The source featureId can come from different field types as long as the values are acceptable destination values for featureId . For example, a destination globalId can be mapped to the GlobalId , Guid , and string field types, and the objectId can be mapped to the short or long field types.

Enable and disable append capabilities

Feature service Append capabilities must be enabled for the append operation to be used by nonadministrative users. Organization administrators or the service owner can use the append operation without adding the Append capability to the feature service. The Append capability needs to be added to the service capabilities property only if the service owner or organization administrators needs to allow a nonadministrator user to append data to a feature service. Organization administrators or the service owner can enable or disable the Append capability on an existing feature service using the feature service updateDefinition API as shown in the example below. For more information on how to add the Append capabilities to a feature service, see Update Definition (Feature Service).

The Append capability does not require any editing capabilities to be enabled. Features will be inserted or updated when upsert is set as true through the append operation without the administrator adding either the Create or Update capabilities to the feature service.

Supports append

A feature service returns the supportsAppend metadata property. When this property is absent or is returned as false , the Append capability cannot be added to the feature service and the feature service does not support the Append operation, even for the organization administrators or feature service owner.

Append sources

The source of the append operation can be one of three parameters: edits , appendItemId , or appendUploadId . edits is a literal feature collection string. appendItemId references the itemId of a file or hosted feature service currently stored in the portal or geowarehouse. appendUploadId references the itemId of a file uploaded to the server through the uploads operation. The itemId of a file in the portal or geowarehouse is completely independent from the itemId of a file stored in the server uploads. Unless a file is needed in the portal or geowarehouse, using the uploads API is recommended. For ArcGIS Enterprise, appendItemId is supported at 10.9 and later.

ArcGIS Enterprise 11.3 introduces support for appending directly to a hosted feature service from another hosted feature service within the same Enterprise organization (not from a different Enterprise organization or from a source reference feature service). Both relational and spatiotemporal data stores can be used as the target of this operation, only relational can be used as a source at present.

Supported append formats

A feature service that supports append returns the supportedAppendFormats metadata property. This property lists the supported appendUploadFormat values for this operation.

The append formats are:

• sqlite : sqlite database
• gpkg : geopackage
• shapefile : shapefile
• filegdb : file geodatabase
• featureCollection : feature collection
• geojson : GeoJSON
• csv : Comma separated values
• excel : Microsoft Excel format
• featureService: a hosted feature service

Sync and Change Tracking

The Append capability is not currently supported if the feature service has sync or changeTracking capabilities enabled. When either sync or changeTracking is enabled on the feature service, Append is blocked for the following reasons:

• The Esrisync engines might not be able to support syncing the changes from the append operation. The append operation might be using a very low-level database API that might prevent the use of triggers to track the changes from the append operation. ArcGIS Online feature service sync engines rely on triggers to track the edit changes.
• The volume of changes from append might be quite large for the syncing process and it will be better for the client to re-create the replica after append .

Attempting to set the upsert parameter to true will return an error if sync or change tracking are enabled.

Feature service layer views

The Append capability can be enabled on feature service layer views.

Preserve featureId

The source featureId (ObjectId or GlobalId ) are only preserved when upsert is set to true . When upsert is false , all rows created will have new ObjectId or GlobalId values allocated by the system.

Feature service metadata

The feature service metadata is updated after adding or updating data using the append operation. The lastEditDate of the feature service will be updated. The extent will also be updated for ArcGIS Online feature services.

Geocoding (ArcGIS Online)

The append operation supports geocoding geometry from CSV and Excel data. The cost and billing of geocoding is the same cost and billing of geocoding during publishing data as a feature service.

Editor tracking and ownership-based access control (OBAC)

Editor tracking is currently supported with feature service append API. The CreationDate , EditDate , Editor , and Creator are populated based on the user who is calling append . Editor tracking fields are set when inserting or updating existing features. The creator and the editor fields will be set to the append user. Service owners and administrators will bypass any OBAC set on the feature service. For nonowners, if "allowsUpdateToOthers" is set to false on the feature service, the append user can only update their features or features owned by anonymous users.

Appending multipatch data (ArcGIS Online)

Appending/upserting data to a multipatch feature service is supported. In ArcGIS Online, the client can turn on Append capability on a multipatch feature service using the feature service updateDefinition operation. Similar to a nonmultipatch feature service, ObjectId , GlobalId , or any other fields with unique index can be used to upsert data to a multipatch feature service. The append operation will return an error when a client tries to append nonmultipatch geometry data into a feature service that stores multipatch geometries.

New at 11.1

The updates and enhancements below have been added to hosted feature services running on a relational data store in ArcGIS Enterprise:

• The Append capability can now be set for qualifying hosted feature services to allow non-service owners and non-organization administrators with access to the feature service to run this operation. In prior releases, the Append capability could not be set for hosted feature services, limiting the scope of those who could use this operation on a given hosted feature service.
• The esriFieldTypeBlob field type is now supported.
• A field's default value is now applied when a row is added with no provided value when using either this operation or Apply Edits.

Request parameters

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layers=[<layer1>, <layer2>, <layer3>]

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layers=0,1,2

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layerMappings=[{"id": <layerID>, "sourceTableName": <"tableName">, "fieldMappings": [{"name": <"targetName">,"source": <"sourceName">}, ...]}]

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layerMappings=[{"id": 0, "sourceTableName": "Countries"}]

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layerMappings=[{"id": 0, "sourceId": 0},{"id": 1, "sourceId": 3}]

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edits={
  "layers": [
    {
      "layerDefinition": {
        "id": 0,
        "name": "appendOrig",
        "type": "Feature Layer",
        "geometryType": "esriGeometryPoint",
        "hasM": false,
        "hasZ": false,
        "objectIdField": "objectid",
        "globalIdField": "globalid",
        "fields": [
          {
            "name": "objectid",
            "type": "esriFieldTypeOID",
            "alias": "OBJECTID",
            "domain": null,
            "nullable": false,
            "defaultValue": null,
            "modelName": "objectid",
            "editable": false
          },
          {
            "name": "data1",
            "type": "esriFieldTypeInteger",
            "alias": "data1",
            "domain": null,
            "editable": true,
            "nullable": true,
            "defaultValue": null,
            "modelName": "data1"
          },
          {
            "name": "string1",
            "type": "esriFieldTypeString",
            "alias": "string1",
            "domain": null,
            "editable": true,
            "nullable": true,
            "length": 8000,
            "defaultValue": null,
            "modelName": "string1"
          },
          {
            "name": "date1",
            "type": "esriFieldTypeDate",
            "alias": "date1",
            "domain": null,
            "editable": true,
            "nullable": true,
            "length": 29,
            "defaultValue": null,
            "modelName": "date1"
          },
          {
            "alias": "globalid",
            "name": "globalid",
            "length": 38,
            "domain": null,
            "nullable": false,
            "type": "esriFieldTypeGlobalID",
            "editable": false
          }
        ],
        "geometryField": {
          "name": "shape",
          "type": "esriFieldTypeGeometry",
          "alias": "Shape",
          "domain": null,
          "editable": true,
          "nullable": false,
          "defaultValue": null,
          "modelName": "shape"
        }
      },
      "featureSet": {
        "geometryType": "esriGeometryPoint",
        "spatialReference": {
          "wkid": 102100,
          "latestWkid": 3857
        },
        "features": [
          {
            "attributes": {
              "objectid": 1,
              "data1": 12,
              "string1": "mystring",
              "date1": 1293840000000,
              "globalid": "{E716381A-C731-4EC8-be6D-C999BC6308F0}"
            },
            "geometry": {
              "spatialReference": {
                "wkid": 102100,
                "latestWkid": 3857
              },
              "x": 11131.949099998921,
              "y": 122458.96290000156
            }
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  ]
}

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appendUploadId=0c6b928f590f49ebac04761bab413e49

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appendItemId=894d8c12438v4baaac164b636f7e1e2f

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appendSourceFilter=[{"id": <layerID>, "where": <SQL expression>}]

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appendSourceFilter=[{"id": 0, "where": "elevation >= 0"}]

Example usage

Example one: append a shapefile

The following is a sample POST request that demonstrates appending data from a shapefile to a feature service:

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POST /webadaptor/rest/services/USA/FeatureServer/append HTTP/1.1
Host: machine.domain.com
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: []

layers=0&upsert=false&useGlobalIds=false&appendItemId=0c6b928f590f49ebac04761bab413e49&rollbackonFailure=true&f=pjson

The above request generates the following response:

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{
  "status": "processing",
  "statusMessage": "Job Status for jobId: b62e9db7-507c-443d-3473-8a1f7a7e9fac",
  "itemId": "cc7ddbc1e33440688d3110c885fa0b30"
}

The jobId from the response can be used to check the job status by making a request of the following form:

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https://machine.domain.com/webadaptor/rest/services/USA/FeatureServer/append/jobs/b62e9db7-507c-443d-3473-8a1f7a7e9fac?f=pjson

If the job is successful, and complete, the above request will return the following response:

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{
  "layerName": "CITIES",
  "submissionTime": 1520876908117,
  "lastUpdatedTime": 1520876913647,
  "recordCount": 2,
  "status": "Completed"
}

Example two: append a file geodatabase

The following is a sample POST request that demonstrates appending data from a file geodatabase:

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POST /webadaptor/rest/services/USA/FeatureServer/append HTTP/1.1
Host: machine.domain.com
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: []

layers=0&layerMappings=[{"id":0,"sourceTableName":"USA"}]&upsert=false&userGlobalIds=false&appendUploadId=0c6b928f590f49ebac04761bab413e49&appendUploadformat=filegdb&rollbackonFailure=true&f=pjson

The above request generates the following response:

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{
  "status": "processing",
  "statusMessage": "Job Status for jobId: feeahh1e-e32c-45bf-680c-f4ed70569081",
  "itemId": "aa7gdww1e55200527d3110c634fa0b30"
}