SimpleRenderer | API Reference | ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript 4.31

SimpleRenderer renders all features in a Layer with one Symbol. This renderer may be used to simply visualize the location of geographic features. For example, layers representing political boundaries, cities, buildings, rivers, etc. that are typically used for providing geographic context in an application may be defined with a single symbol per layer.

Supported layers

SimpleRenderer may only be used to create visualizations for the following layer types: FeatureLayer, SceneLayer, MapImageLayer, CSVLayer, GeoJSONLayer, OGCFeatureLayer, WFSLayer, and StreamLayer

The example in the screenshot below contains three layers: one of state boundaries, another of highways, and another of cities. Each gives geographic context to the map.

SimpleRenderer can also be used to thematically visualize numeric data attributes. This is accomplished with visual variables. Visual variables define the parameters for data-driven visualizations of numeric data. They allow you to easily map continuous ramps of color, size, and/or opacity to minimum and maximum data values of one of the layer's numeric attribute fields.

The example below adds size and color visual variables in a 3D SceneView to thematically visualize a hurricane's windspeed in various locations along its path.

To read more about visual variables, see the visualVariables property.

See also

Examples

// Set a basic symbol on a layer to visualize all features the same way
let citiesRenderer = {
  type: "simple",  // autocasts as new SimpleRenderer()
  symbol: {
    type: "simple-marker",  // autocasts as new SimpleMarkerSymbol()
    size: 6,
    color: "black",
    outline: {  // autocasts as new SimpleLineSymbol()
      width: 0.5,
      color: "white"
    }
  }
};
let citiesLayer = new FeatureLayer({
  url: "http://url.to.service",
  renderer: citiesRenderer
});

// Set a continuous color ramp on the renderer with visual variables
let citiesRenderer = {
  type: "simple",  // autocasts as new SimpleRenderer()
  symbol: { type: "simple-fill" },  // autocasts as new SimpleFillSymbol()
  visualVariables: [{
    type: "color",
    field: "POPULATION",
    normalizationField: "SQ_KM",
    // features with 30 ppl/sq km or below are assigned the first color
    stops: [{ value: 100, color: "#fffcd4" },
          { value: 500, color: "#0d2644" }]
  }]
};
let citiesLayer = new FeatureLayer({
  url: "http://url.to.service",
  renderer: citiesRenderer
});

Constructors

SimpleRenderer Constructor new SimpleRenderer(properties)

Parameter

properties Object

optional

See the properties for a list of all the properties that may be passed into the constructor.

Property Overview

Any properties can be set, retrieved or listened to. See the Watch for changes topic.

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Type	Summary	Class
String	The name of the class.	Accessor
String	The label for the renderer.	SimpleRenderer
Symbol	The symbol used by the renderer to visualize all features in the layer.	SimpleRenderer
String	The type of renderer.	SimpleRenderer
VisualVariable []	An array of VisualVariable objects.	SimpleRenderer

Property Details

declaredClass Inherited Property declaredClass Stringreadonly Inherited from Accessor Since: ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript 4.7 Accessor since 4.0, declaredClass added at 4.7.

The name of the class. The declared class name is formatted as esri.folder.className.

label Property label String

The label for the renderer. This describes what features with the given symbol represent in the real world. This will display next to the layer's symbol inside the Legend widget.

This text is not displayed in the Legend when visualVariables are used. When the renderer contains visualVariables, you should set the title property in legendOptions on each visual variable to describe the visualization.

symbol Property symbol Symbolautocast

The symbol used by the renderer to visualize all features in the layer.

Example

let renderer = {
  type: "simple",  // autocasts as new SimpleRenderer()
  symbol: {
    type: "simple-fill",  // autocasts as new SimpleFillSymbol()
    color: [ 255, 128, 0, 0.5 ],
    outline: {  // autocasts as new SimpleLineSymbol()
      width: 1,
      color: "white"
    }
  }
};

type Property type Stringreadonly

The type of renderer.

For SimpleRenderer the type is always "simple".

visualVariables Property visualVariables VisualVariable[]autocast Autocasts from Object []

An array of VisualVariable objects. Each object must indicate the type of visual variable to apply (e.g. ColorVisualVariable, SizeVisualVariable, OpacityVisualVariable, RotationVisualVariable), the numeric field or expression from which to drive the visualization, and the visual values to map to the data. The following list identifies each visual variable type and provides a link to the specification table of each.

Type	Object Specification	Legend Example
color	ColorVariable
size	SizeVisualVariable
opacity	OpacityVisualVariable
rotation	RotationVisualVariable	-

Visual variables are primarily be used in two ways.

1. Thematic mapping

In most cases, visual variables are used to create visualizations based on a thematic attribute (e.g. population, education, rank, money, magnitude, etc.) in either 2D or 3D.

renderer.visualVariables = [{
  type: "size",
  field: "POP_POVERTY",
  normalizationField: "TOTPOP_CY",
  legendOptions: {
    title: "% population in poverty by county"
  },
  stops: [
    { value: 0.15, size: 4, label: "<15%" },
    { value: 0.25, size: 12, label: "25%" },
    { value: 0.35, size: 24, label: ">35%" }
  ]
}];

You can take the visualization a step further and use multiple visual variables in the same renderer. The sample below uses three visual variables (size, color, and opacity).

2. Mapping real-world sizes

The size visual variable can be used to visualize the true sizes of features (e.g. tree canopy, road width, building height, etc.) based on their size in the real world. This can be particularly powerful when working in a 3D SceneView. The image below shows a layer of trees that uses visual variables to size each feature to the true dimensions of each tree based on data stored in multiple attribute fields.

See the Thematic visualization with realistic 3D symbols for an example of using multiple visual variables to visualize your data.

Known Limitations

Color and opacity visual variables must not have more than 8 stops and size visual variables must not have more than 6 stops. This does not apply to variables driven by view scale.

For apps where users can interactively change the field or valueExpression of a visual variable, we suggest you include all potential fields referenced by visual variables in the outFields of the layer. This ensures the best user experience when switching or updating fields in renderers.

See also

Styles and data visualization

Method Overview

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Return Type	Summary	Class
	Adds one or more handles which are to be tied to the lifecycle of the object.	Accessor
SimpleRenderer	Creates a deep clone of the renderer.	SimpleRenderer
*	Creates a new instance of this class and initializes it with values from a JSON object generated from an ArcGIS product.	Renderer
Boolean	Returns true if a named group of handles exist.	Accessor
	Removes a group of handles owned by the object.	Accessor
Object	Converts an instance of this class to its ArcGIS portal JSON representation.	Renderer

Method Details

addHandles Inherited Method addHandles(handleOrHandles, groupKey) Inherited from Accessor Since: ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript 4.25 Accessor since 4.0, addHandles added at 4.25.

Adds one or more handles which are to be tied to the lifecycle of the object. The handles will be removed when the object is destroyed.

// Manually manage handles
const handle = reactiveUtils.when(
  () => !view.updating,
  () => {
    wkidSelect.disabled = false;
  },
  { once: true }
);

this.addHandles(handle);

// Destroy the object
this.destroy();

Parameters

handleOrHandles WatchHandle|WatchHandle []

Handles marked for removal once the object is destroyed.

groupKey *

optional

Key identifying the group to which the handles should be added. All the handles in the group can later be removed with Accessor.removeHandles(). If no key is provided the handles are added to a default group.

clone Method clone(){SimpleRenderer}

Creates a deep clone of the renderer.

Returns

Type	Description
SimpleRenderer	A deep clone of the object that invoked this method.

Example

// Creates a deep clone of the first layer's renderer
let renderer = view.map.layers.at(0).renderer.clone();

fromJSON Inherited Method fromJSON(json){*}static

Creates a new instance of this class and initializes it with values from a JSON object generated from an ArcGIS product. The object passed into the input json parameter often comes from a response to a query operation in the REST API or a toJSON() method from another ArcGIS product. See the Using fromJSON() topic in the Guide for details and examples of when and how to use this function.

Parameter

json Object

A JSON representation of the instance in the ArcGIS format. See the ArcGIS REST API documentation for examples of the structure of various input JSON objects.

Returns

Type	Description
*	Returns a new instance of this class.

hasHandles Inherited Method hasHandles(groupKey){Boolean} Inherited from Accessor Since: ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript 4.25 Accessor since 4.0, hasHandles added at 4.25.

Returns true if a named group of handles exist.

Parameter

groupKey *

optional

A group key.

Returns

Type	Description
Boolean	Returns `true` if a named group of handles exist.

Example

// Remove a named group of handles if they exist.
if (obj.hasHandles("watch-view-updates")) {
  obj.removeHandles("watch-view-updates");
}

removeHandles Inherited Method removeHandles(groupKey) Inherited from Accessor Since: ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript 4.25 Accessor since 4.0, removeHandles added at 4.25.

Removes a group of handles owned by the object.

Parameter

groupKey *

optional

A group key or an array or collection of group keys to remove.

Example

obj.removeHandles(); // removes handles from default group

obj.removeHandles("handle-group");
obj.removeHandles("other-handle-group");

toJSON Inherited Method toJSON(){Object} Inherited from Renderer

Converts an instance of this class to its ArcGIS portal JSON representation. See the Using fromJSON() guide topic for more information.

Returns

Type	Description
Object	The ArcGIS portal JSON representation of an instance of this class.