Version 2.0 of the ArcGIS API for Microsoft Silverlight/WPF was released on July 9, shortly before the Esri International User Conference. The new features and functionality in 2.0 that leverage ArcGIS Server 10 have been well received and discussions at the User Conference highlighted many of these benefits. A few questions were raised regarding the migration of Silverlight and WPF applications from version 1.x to 2.0. From the tooling perspective, 2.0 requires an upgrade to Microsoft SDKs and platforms that support Silverlight 4 and .NET 4.0, thus Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend 4 are necessary. Links to these requirements are provided in the Installation and System Requirements documents on the ArcGIS resource center. Some minor changes to the API (listed as breaking changes in What’s New document) may require you to update your application code. However, in a vast majority of cases you can simply migrate your application using Visual Studio 2010, target Silverlight 4 or .NET 4, and reference version 2.0 of ArcGIS API Silverlight or WPF assemblies.
Now on to what is coming with version 2.1. First, in mid-August we will host a public beta of ArcGIS for Windows Phone. The product will include an API and an application. Since the development platform for Windows Phone applications is based on Silverlight, the ArcGIS API will match core (ESRI.ArcGIS.Client.dll) and Bing (ESRI.ArcGIS.Client.Bing.dll) library support present in the Silverlight/WPF API. The ArcGIS application for Windows Phone will be available for download from Windows Marketplace in the near future. The ArcGIS for Windows Phone resource center will provide the information you will need to get started.
For the Silverlight/WPF API as a whole, we are targeting the following enhancements in version 2.1:
- Support for disconnected scenarios where the API will generate, manage, and use a local cache of image tiles and features.
- Integrate touch and gestures functionality for a consistent interactive surface experience across multiple devices.
- Support for legend metadata provided by ArcGIS 10 sp1 map services. A legend or TOC control may be added to the toolkit.
- Use ArcGIS.com web map documents to configure a Silverlight Map or application.
Version 2.1 of the Silverlight/WPF API and ArcGIS for Windows Phone will be released in mid-November 2010.
Update: Beta versions of ArcGIS Silverlight/WPF and Windows Phone APIs were released October 5, 2010.
ArcGIS API for Silverlight/WPF 2.1 Beta is available here: http://help.arcgis.com/en/webapi/silverlight/2.1/
ArcGIS API for Windows Phone 2.1 Beta 2 is available here: http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgismobile/10.0/apis/windowsphone/
The ArcGIS Silverlight/WPF Development Team
13 Responses to Version 2.0 released, 2.1 is coming soon!
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I am still not able to retrieve the symbols from a feature service created on ArcGIs Server 10? The geometry type is esriMapPoint, what else i need? can u pleeeease help?
In version 2.1, after checking out a cache and working offline, will you be able to edit feature data and then check it back in when online?
robert.sutherland-
It’s too early to guarantee specific functionality and use of a local cache. However, the scenario you mention is on our list for evaluation.
subrotobera-
My apologies, the symbol types returned for a feature layer are internal. The symbol definitions returned from a feature layer in a map service or feature service may be different than the capabilities of graphic symbols available in the Silverlight/WPF API, so we kept them internal. However, they subclass the base public symbol classes in ESRI.ArcGIS.Client.Symbols (MarkerSymbol, LineSymbol, FillSymbol) so you can cast to those base types. Unfortunately this is an abstract view and does not provide access to properties on the internal types (e.g. the Source property on ESRI.ArcGIS.Client.FeatureService.Symbols.PictureFillSymbol). Note, when debugging you will be able to see these internal types, you just won’t be able to use them.
So what can you do? You have a couple options. We provide a set of hidden controls in the Toolkit library that enable you to display symbols. In this case you can access a symbol used by a feature layer and set the Symbol property on the SymbolDisplay control. You can wire this up via binding in XAML or create and use in code behind.
Picture symbols defined for feature layers in ArcGIS Server map and feature services are available via rest. You can access the image url or retrieve the mime data. Return the metadata for a feature layer in json to view the image url and mime data.
For example, http://sampleserver3.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/Fire/Sheep/FeatureServer/0?f=pjson will return drawing info for the Points of Interest feature layer. In the drawingInfo array you will see a renderer with one or more classifications (depending on the renderer). In this case one of the unique value renderer infos contains a “url” parameter which represents part of the url to the symbol image.
http://sampleserver3.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/Fire/Sheep/MapServer/0/images/86A29AC1
The “imageData” parameter is the base64 encoded representation of the symbol image. You can process either in code-behind, but you’ll need to make the request and parse the json manually. I’ve provided a sample here to illustrate this: http://serverapps.esri.com/blogdownloads/2010/RenderJsonImages.zip
Hope this helps.
Any idea on if 2.1 will fix Behaviors with Silverlight 4?
kasesock-
Can you provide more details on what needs to be fixed?
Is there a beta available for version 2.1 of the ArcGIS Silverlight/WPF API? Also, this article mentions that a Legend/TOC control may be added to the toolkit. Has this been decided? If it is going to be included, how can get more information about it?
Thanks.
bdwinal-
The first beta for version 2.1 of Silverlight/WPF API will be available at the end of September. A second beta for version 2.1 of Windows Phone will also be available at that time. The legend\toc control that will be part of the toolkit will likely be based information available via the legend child resource on a map service in ArcGIS Server 10 sp1. That’s about all the information I can provide on that topic at this time. In the meantime, here are a few links that show current (simple) examples:
http://blogs.esri.com/Dev/blogs/silverlightwpf/archive/2010/09/08/Use-SymbolDisplay-to-create-symbol-swatches-for-legends.aspx
http://help.arcgis.com/en/webapi/silverlight/samples/start.htm#TimeMapService
Thanks Rex. This is helpful to know. Look forward to the beta.
Just checking if the first beta of the Silverlight API 2.1 been released?
2.1 Beta URL
http://help.arcgis.com/en/webapi/silverlight/2.1/
Rex,
Is the “Support for disconnected scenarios where the API will generate, manage, and use a local cache of image tiles and features” is in this beta?
Are there any samples/demos showing this capability? and how are the features cached locally (i.e.: serialized datasets, sqllite, etc…) ?
Thanks
-Sam
Just got a look at the 2.1 beta. I was interested in getting an initial evaluation of the legend/TOC control being added to the Toolkit. However, I don’t see this in the toolkit. Will this control not be available until the release? Thanks.