The MapExplorer is an interactive map client that allows you to navigate and query over a collection of layers. The MapExplorer can be launched from the Search module, the Layers module or your cart by selecting one or more layers and clicking on the
View Map button.
Maps are stored as Web Map Context documents. A Web Map Context document is an
XML Extensible Markup Language. An open standard for exchanging structured documents and data over the Internet. file that describes a map. It contains a list of layers that make up a map, the extent of the map, what layers can be queried and various other
metadata Metadata is "data about data". It is structured information that describes the content, quality, condition, origin, and other characteristics of data. . Web Map Context documents are portable and can be executed by other services. You can access the Web Map Context document for your map by clicking the
Download button in the toolbar.
EditMap Toolbar
The map toolbar provides several map navigation functions. The zoom-in, zoom-out, pan and query buttons toggle the navigation
mode of the map and must be selected prior to clicking or dragging your mouse in the map window. In the example below, the pan tool is active as indicated by the box around it.
EditMap Legend
The legend displays the layers in your map. The layers are drawn from the bottom up. For example, the top most layer in the legend is drawn last. You can toggle the visibility of a layer by checking/unchecking the check box to the left of its title.
To change the display order of a layer, left click on the drag handle and while holding the mouse button down, slide the layer up or down. Release the mouse button. The map will redraw itself.
NOTE: Not all layers will have a legend.
EditProcedure for querying map layers
Map layers that are queryable will display a
icon on their titlebar in the legend. Only one layer can be queried at a time.
Map layer selected for querying
- Click the title of the layer you would like to query. The title bar will turn blue indicating that it is selected for querying.
- Click the Query button on the map toolbar to change the navigation mode to query.
- Click on a map feature to open a query result window with the query results.
NOTE: If no features are found the query result window will self close.
Query results can vary depending on how the remote service is configured. For example some services may return a web page, plain text or XML as a query result. Map layers hosted in Phoenix will always return HTML (See
Layers).
EditRelated Tasks