ArcMap

Accessing your data from the WFS connection

Available with Production Mapping license.

You can access your data in ArcMap from the Web Feature Service (WFS) connection so you can edit and publish back to the service.

  1. Add a WFS connection to your WFS service from ArcMap.
  2. Expand the WFS connection in the Catalog window.
  3. Zoom to your area of interest.
  4. Drag the feature classes you want from the service to the map.

    Only the features that intersect the current extent will be consumed. You can now edit your data in an edit session.

  5. Once you've edited your features, save your edits in the current session and stop the edit session.

    You can now publish your edits to the service.

Using the WFS Connection string format

The following connection string format can be used with the WFSToGeodatabase tool's WFS Server parameter to make WFS server data accessible. A value can be passed in any of the following formats:

  • Service URL—The URL of the source WFS service.
  • WFS Connection file—The encrypted connection file (.wfs) that supports additional properties such as filtering, request method type, WFS version, axis ordering, authorization information security, and so on.
  • WFS Connection string—The plain text format WFS connection file. The following is an example format for WFS connection strings: 

    SERVER=http://www.example.com:6080/services/us/WFSServer;FLIPAXISORDER=yes; 
FEATURETYPES=us:cities,us:roads;

Supported WFS properties

PropertyTypeValues

Server

String

Escaped service URL

Version

String

1.1.0 or 2.0.0

Username

String

Escaped username

Password

String

Escaped password

FeatureTypes

String

Comma-separated value (CSV) list of qualified feature types

MaxFeatureCount

Integer

Nonzero value (0 means no limitation)

FlipAxisOrder

Boolean

YES | NO

UseFieldAlias

Boolean

YES | NO

UseHttpGET

Boolean

YES | NO

Note the following additional considerations for WFS properties:

  • The properties are delimited with semicolons, while property/value pairs are delimited with the equal sign.
  • The connection string should always start with the “Server=” property.
  • If a value contains a space or any of the special characters [ :;/<>=”#%&?@ ], it should be encoded using the URL escape characters. For more information, see the HTML URL Encoding Reference.
  • The property names and values are case insensitive, except username and password.
  • Feature type items should be qualified with a namespace prefix.
  • You can use any of these values to set the Boolean values: yes, true, 1.
  • Only the prefix of the WFS version is checked when validating, which means that 1.1 and 2.0 are valid versions.