{"id":187361,"date":"2014-10-07T20:41:50","date_gmt":"2014-10-08T03:41:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/?post_type=blog&p=187361"},"modified":"2018-12-18T09:55:32","modified_gmt":"2018-12-18T17:55:32","slug":"using-python-to-push-updates-to-a-hosted-feature-service-from-an-external-source","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/arcgis-online\/sharing-collaboration\/using-python-to-push-updates-to-a-hosted-feature-service-from-an-external-source","title":{"rendered":"Using Python to push updates to a hosted feature service from an external source"},"author":4031,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_searchwp_excluded":""},"categories":[37511],"tags":[24521,24341],"industry":[],"product":[36551],"class_list":["post-187361","blog","type-blog","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sharing-collaboration","tag-hosted-feature-services","tag-python","product-arcgis-online"],"acf":{"short_description":"We all know the power of using feature services with ArcGIS.com to share our data and maps.","flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"

We all know the power of using feature services with ArcGIS.com to share our data and maps. These maps become even more powerful when the content automatically updates.\u00a0GeoRSS<\/a>\u00a0feeds allow you to quickly pull content into your map. Well, what happens if you find an API or some geo-enabled information that doesn\u2019t provide a GeoRSS feed but you want to get that information into your feature service? Python can act as the \u201cglue\u201d to combine the geo-information from the web into your hosted feature service.<\/p>\n

Dave MacLean<\/a>\u00a0from the Centre of Geographic Sciences (COGS) has a\u00a0webmap<\/a>\u00a0that captures tweets and photos from the astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS). Recently he worked with us (at Esri) to write a Python script that captures the ISS location from a website supplying the location as JSON and then pushes the relevant information into a hosted feature service. The current ISS location on his map allows viewers to prepare for an ISS sighting.\u00a0\"ISS<\/a><\/p>\n

Dave found a website that provides the real-time location of the ISS making the \u00a0information available in\u00a0JSON<\/a>, which the Python script parses. The script runs on an old laptop with a 60-second delay (You could investigate a cloud or other hosting solution to run your script if you can\u2019t dedicate a computer to running it). With the script updating the feature service, he used the\u00a0refresh layer<\/a>\u00a0method while building his web application to refresh the layer every minute.<\/p>\n

You can\u00a0download<\/a>, fork or just explore the Python code we wrote to upload the ISS location from the\u00a0github repo<\/a>. Detailed\u00a0instructions to setup and deploy<\/a>\u00a0the script are also provided.\u00a0Here are some of the key points you should note about the script before modifying it to fit your workflows.<\/p>\n