Attribute Assistant
Attribute Assistant is an add-in for ESRI ArcMap. It looks pretty neat.
I will be deploying it in a few days to help our cartographers with maintenance of tax lots. It will populate much of the attribute data for them.
The version I am using was release January 2018
Official documentation
This is the best description I have found so far: https://solutions.arcgis.com/state-government/help/sign-inventory/tools/tour-attribute-assistant/
My 2 cents
The good parts
- They are still releasing new versions (so far) and it's supported.
- The range of built in functions is pretty good.
- The documentation is reasonably good.
The awful part -- VBScript
Expressions have to be written in VBScript, which is like stepping back in time about 15 years for me. I stopped using VBScript when ESRI started supporting Python and (until today) I never looked back.
Python is clean, expressive, and consistent in its approach. It has been adopted widely, so you only have to learn one language to accomplish everything from GIS to Web apps to sysadmin.
I need a link here to the VBScript guide. Don't be confused by references to Visual Basic or VB.Net. I am not sure about the browser version of VBScript, so take this VBScript reference at w3schools with a grain of salt. Also perhaps this tutorial. Maybe they are great; they helped me today.
Concatenate strings with "&"
You can use VBScript in label expressions for testing
Comment out strings with "rem"
Use () as array element delimiters instead of [].
The stupid part
The word is that ESRI now wants me to learn and use "Arcade" which is not Python and not Javascript. I am delaying in the hopes that it goes away before I have to learn it.
James Fee's comments on Arcade https://medium.com/@jamesfee/esri-arcade-3b6515d08d28
I say Arcade is stupid because I feel coerced to learn Arcade and no one likes being coerced by a vendor. I embraced Python because I knew skills learned there would be portable. In 5 years (tops) ESRI will announce it no longer supports Arcade.
Tricks and pratfalls
In case you have not looked at it yet, the way it works is that you put a table in your MXD called DynamicValue and then populate it with rules. The add-in fires the rules when the events are tripped.
A trick: populate the AutoWho and AutoDate attributes
| Table Name | Field Name | Value Method | Value Info | On Create | On Change (Attribute) | On Change (Geometry) | Manual Only | Rule Weight | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| * | AutoWho | CURRENT_USER | U | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | <Null> | |
| * | AutoDate | TIMESTAMP | DATE | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | <Null> |
AutoWho: Putting U in the Value Info column makes it use only the user name, otherwise it puts DOMAIN\USERNAME which is ugly.
AutoDate: Putting DATE in the Value Info column makes it use only the date, no time stamp, which is what I want.
Pratfall category
| Table Name | Field Name | Value Method | Value Info | On Create | On Change (Attribute) | On Change (Geometry) | Manual Only | Rule Weight | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| taxlot | MapTaxlot | EXPRESSION | Split( [MapNumber],".")(0)&Split( [MapNumber],".")(1)&" "&Split( [MapNumber],".")(2)&" "& [Taxlot] | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | <Null> |
When using expressions, you have to cram your VBScript into the Value Info field, no matter how long or complex. It has to be on one line since there is no support for anything like a code block. Expressions can be complex, and support IF statements, but they will be hard to support.
So in this case I had to call "Split" 3 times with the same arguments. Normally I'd say that's awful and it would be two lines, but I don't see any way to do that in Attribute Assistant. In ArcMap I'd use a code block.
s = Split([MapNumber],".") s(0)&s(1)&" "&s(2)&" "& [Taxlot]
There are currently 68 built in functions in the Assistant and EXPRESSION is just one of them. Use the other 67 if you can!
What is "Rule weight"?
"Rank rules in order of priority. Rules with a higher weight are processed first. Rules with null values are always run last."
That's what I guessed. So for example in my case, so far I have not needed it but if I wanted to cascade several attributes, then I'd need to control execution order.
