Renderer | API Reference | ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript 4.31

Renderers define how to visually represent each feature in one of the following layer types:

The Renderer object contains drawing information for the layer and is the base class for all renderers.

There are several types of renderers available for visualizing data. Each serves a different purpose, allowing you to explore your data and tell a visual story about it by combining geography and statistics. Most cartographic visualizations fall into one of the following categories.

Visualization type	Renderer
Location only	SimpleRenderer, HeatmapRenderer
Unique (typed) values	UniqueValueRenderer
Class breaks	ClassBreaksRenderer
Continuous color/size	SimpleRenderer or UniqueValueRenderer with visualVariables
Multivariate	SimpleRenderer or UniqueValueRenderer with visualVariables, DotDensityRenderer, PieChartRenderer

Location

In many cases, the user just wants to see where a set of features are located. Some examples might be political boundaries, cities, buildings, rivers, etc. These are scenarios where you want all features in the layer to have the same symbol. To accomplish this you would use a SimpleRenderer.

The example in the screenshot below contains three layers; each uses a SimpleRenderer to assign all features the same symbol. The polygon layer represents states with no fill and a gray outline. The polyline layer visualizes highways with bright blue lines. The point layer depicts cities as marker symbols with the same bright blue color.

Unique types

UniqueValueRenderer allows you to symbolize features based on one or more matching string attribute values. Unique values are typically differentiated with colors, fill styles, or images to represent features of various types.

In the image below, each line is symbolized with a different color depending on the jurisdiction to which the highway belongs. For example, green lines are highways in the "Tampa District" whereas red lines are highways in the "Central District".

Read more on the UniqueValueRenderer page.

Class breaks

ClassBreaksRenderer sets the symbol of each feature in a layer based on the value of a numeric attribute. Symbols are assigned to classes, or ranges of data. Each feature is assigned a symbol based on the class in which the value of the attribute falls. In the example below, a FeatureLayer representing block groups is rendered with a ClassBreaksRenderer. Features where fewer than 35% of the population have a college degree are rendered with a deep green color. Features where between 35% and 50% of the population have a college degree are rendered with a pale green symbol. The other features are similarly rendered based on the value of the attribute of interest.

Read more on the ClassBreaksRenderer page.

Continuous ramps and multivariate visualizations

Rather than manually creating several class breaks to visualize numeric data, you can depict more variation in your layer using continuous styles. The color, size, opacity, and rotation visualVariables allow you to do this in either a SimpleRenderer, UniqueValueRenderer, or ClassBreaksRenderer.

The example below uses a UniqueValueRenderer with an opacity visual variable to map predominant types and the strength of their predominance in relation to other variables.

See visual variables for more information.

See also

Styles and data visualization

Property Overview

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

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Type	Summary	Class
AuthoringInfo	Authoring metadata only included in renderers generated from one of the Smart Mapping creator methods, such as sizeRendererCreator.createContinuousRenderer() or colorRendererCreator.createContinuousRenderer().	Renderer
String	The name of the class.	Accessor
String	The renderer type.	Renderer

Property Details

authoringInfo Property authoringInfo AuthoringInfoautocast

Authoring metadata only included in renderers generated from one of the Smart Mapping creator methods, such as sizeRendererCreator.createContinuousRenderer() or colorRendererCreator.createContinuousRenderer(). This includes information from UI elements such as sliders and selected classification methods and themes. This allows the authoring clients to save specific overridable settings so that next time it is accessed via the UI, their selections can be remembered.

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.

type Property type Stringreadonly

The renderer type.

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
*	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.

fromJSON 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 Method toJSON(){Object}

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.