why is my findTask Not working correctly? can someone please look at my code and see if I have missed something?

Question

My findTask is from the SAMPLE on ERSI's website

http://help.arcgis.com/en/webapi/javascript/arcgis/help/jssamples/find_map_datagrid.html

I have incorporated into the project I am working on. I've looked over the code again and again and can't seem to figure out why this is not working.

ADDED - here is a link to the map.. http://www.co.frederick.va.us/planning/newmap1copy2.html UPDATED - Link..

Answer 1

Pro tip: use Fiddler to watch the traffic between your browser (viewer) and the server. Doing so produces this URL for your search query:

http://gis.co.frederick.va.us/ArcGIS/rest/services/Planning/Planning_PAT/MapServer/find?f=json&searchText=54%20%20%20%20A%20%20%20%2025&contains=true&returnGeometry=true&layers=5&searchFields=PIN&sr=102113&callback=dojo.io.script.jsonp_dojoIoScript8._jsonpCallback

Opening that URL in your browser will show you the 500 error that is getting returned. 500 errors mean something's gone wrong on the server side. Change the output format to HTML and you get back some surprising results:

http://gis.co.frederick.va.us/ArcGIS/rest/services/Planning/Planning_PAT/MapServer/find?f=html&searchText=54%20%20%20%20A%20%20%20%2025&contains=true&returnGeometry=true&layers=5&searchFields=PIN&sr=102113&callback=dojo.io.script.jsonp_dojoIoScript8._jsonpCallback

Why is that Feature ID -1? What is going on with that?

I would have expected something more like this:

http://gis.co.frederick.va.us/ArcGIS/rest/services/Planning/Planning_PAT/MapServer/5/query?text=54++++A++++25&geometry=&geometryType=esriGeometryEnvelope&inSR=&spatialRel=esriSpatialRelIntersects&where=&returnGeometry=true&outSR=&outFields=&f=html

Results with geometry.

Whatever is causing the Find task to return 500 errors / -1 unique IDs is what's wrong. You should be able to capture some info if you open up "rest.config" in C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\ArcGIS\rest, set the Logging/LogLevel to DEBUG, make the Find request that returns a 500 error and then consult restlog.txt for clues.

Answer 2

The first thing that jumps out at me is that on your sample page you are searching for an owners name, but your find parameters are set for the PIN field.

findParams.layerIds = [5];
findParams.searchFields = ["PIN"];
findParams.outSpatialReference = map.spatialReference;

Try setting findParams.searchFields to your owner name field, unless you store owners name in the PIN field. It may not be the answer, but may be a pointer in the right direction.

Answer 3

Not strictly a "this is why it's failing" answer, but there's some good clues here.

The following is from Firebug:

Params:
callback: dojo.io.script.jsonp_dojoIoScript7._jsonpCallback
contains: true
f: json
layers: 5
returnGeometry:true
searchFields:PIN
searchText:KATZ
sr:102113

The response is: dojo.io.script.jsonp_dojoIoScript7._jsonpCallback({"results":[]});

My immediate question/thought/suspicion is that either value for "layers" is wrong, or the value for "searchFields" is wrong. You're definitely not getting data back, so it's not client-side code not dealing with the response correctly.

Follow-on bits:
If you start here with your own service definition, and use 5 for the layer, PIN for the search field, and 102113 for the spatial reference you get a little more info. I searched for 54A, and got results back... kind of. Specifically, I got 83 results all with a FeatureId of -1. Does the underlying layer for layer id 5 have a FeatureId field?

Edit: Duh. I could have looked at the specification. Yep, there's an ObjectId.

Further: The query functionality is fine. It's only "Find" that's failing. That's genuinely strange. I'd be tempted to suggest rebuilding / republishing the service - I don't know if this is based on MSD or MXD, or what the underlying data sources are, but there's something interestingly confused.

Answer 4

I hate to resort to "Upgrade to the latest version" as a solution, but what version and edition (Java or .Net) is your ArcGIS Server instance? I'm guessing 9.3 or earlier based on this lack of a "currentVersion": <currentVersion>, in the response to

http://gis.co.frederick.va.us/ArcGIS/rest/services?f=json

If your AGS instance is indeed 9.3 and Java, this ESRI forum thread seems to indicate that an upgrade to 9.3.1 could be a fix. Also some related fixed NIMs at 9.3.1

• NIM040198 - When using the REST API in ArcGIS Server for Java platform, Query, Find or Identify operation does not return Hebrew characters correctly in a JSON response. HTML output is correct.
• NIM040199 - When using a Unicode datasource in a Map Service, REST API in ArcGIS Server for Java platform does not return non-English characters correctly in JSON response for Query, Find or Identify operation. HTML output is correct.

Who knows if this is related to the bizarre "Feature ID: -1" issue, but as Herb and mwalker note, that is very strange.