Annotation
A layer that can visualize annotation text data. Annotation can be used to symbolize text on your maps as described here in https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/help/data/annotation/annotation.htm. It is defined using a text string, geographical location, and display properties including font, size, and color. This information is stored together in an annotation feature class within a geodatabase.
There are two kinds of annotation:
Standard annotation is not formally associated with features in the geodatabase. An example of standard annotation is the text on a map for a mountain range. No specific feature represents the mountain range, but it is an area you want to mark. Standard annotation is read-only.
Feature-linked annotation is associated with a specific feature in another feature class in the geodatabase. The text in feature-linked annotation reflects the value of a field or fields from the feature to which it is linked. For example, the water transmission mains in a water network can be annotated with their names, which are stored in a field in the transmission mains feature class. If you edit the attributes and/or geographical position of the feature associated with the feature-linked annotation, any changes will be applied to the annotation feature table, and visible changes to the annotation will be reflected in the MapView. If the feature-linked annotation is stored in an Enterprise server, its feature and annotation tables must contain global object ids.
You can construct an annotation layer using any of the following:
URL or portal item of an online annotation feature class
Feature table containing annotation features:
An online ServiceFeatureTable that has a feature layer service type of ArcGISFeatureLayerInfoServiceType.AnnotationLayer
An offline GeodatabaseFeatureTable returned by the Geodatabase.getAnnotationTables() collection when a GenerateGeodatabaseJob has completed
Annotation layers can be taken offline from a feature service hosted on ArcGIS Enterprise 10.7.1 or later, using the GeodatabaseSyncTask. Annotation layers are also supported in mobile map packages created in ArcGIS Pro 2.3 or later.
Annotation respects the reference scale defined by the map, so annotation will always be presented to the user at the correct size and position, as defined by the annotation author.
Each annotation layer is partitioned into annotation sublayers. Each annotation sublayer corresponds to the label class of the original labels that were used to publish the annotation. In ArcGIS Pro, the annotation sublayers are known as annotation classes.
Annotation sublayers offer greater control over the annotation:
An author can set different visual properties on the sublayer compared to the parent annotation layer. For example, font, size, color, or different minimum and maximum scale ranges.
You can access the annotation sublayer metadata information, such as the legend information, and set the visibility of each annotation sublayer
See also
Constructors
Creates an annotation layer from a feature table containing annotation features. If the feature table does not contain annotation data then the AnnotationLayer will fail to load. ArcGISFeatureTable.getLayerInfo() and ArcGISFeatureLayerInfo.getServiceType() can be checked, to verify the feature type, before attempting to create a Layer.
Creates a new annotation layer object from a feature service portal item.
Creates a new annotation layer from a feature service URI. If the specified URI is not a valid Feature Service endpoint, then it will fail to load.
Functions
Cancels loading metadata for the Loadable object.
Updates any selected features in the layer back to the un-selected state.
Clones the AnnotationLayer.
Fetches the list of legend info.
Returns a list of the currently selected features.
Returns the layer content's effective visibility at the specified scale. Returns the effective layer content visibility. This effective visibility takes care of the effective visibility of the parents at the specified scale. Will return false if an error occurs.
Resets the visibility of the layer's features back to the original visibility when loaded from the data source.
Selects the given feature and adds it to the current list of selected features.
Selects the features in the list and adds them to the current list of selected features.
Selects the features that match the criteria in the QueryParameters object and adds them to the current list of selected features.
Sets the visibility of the given features.
Sets the visibility of the given feature.
Unselects the given feature and removes it from the current list of selected features.
Unselects the features in the given list and removes them from the current list of selected features.
Properties
The weight of annotation features when considered as barriers to labeling. The default is LabelBarrierWeight.High.
An expression which is a SQL statement where clause to specify the subset of features to be displayed. The definition expression string uses the SQL-92 where clause syntax (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL-92). The default value is an empty string, which will allow all annotation features in the data source to be used by the AnnotationLayer. Warning: Be sure to escape special characters in the expression string as required for your platform. The DATE keyword expects the date format yyyy-mm-dd and the TIMESTAMP keyword expects the time stamp format yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss. See the ArcGIS Blog article entitled "Querying Feature Services Date-Time Queries" (https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/api-rest/data-management/querying-feature-services-date-time-queries/) for more information.
The unique identifying string for the layer, for example specified in a map or scene. The id is used by other parts of this API to refer to a specific Layer, such as in a set of FeatureFenceParameters or a FacilityLayerDefinition. If not supplied, all layers will be assigned a unique id when created.