Is there a method to group layers in the MapChart in Spotfire?

[Dagfinn Veiberg]

I have a large number of layers (30-40) in my Spotfire MapCharts

I asked Chat GPT to propose a Java script to put layers into groups. This will provide higher efficiency when working with the layers, specifically if I am able to turn on/off entire groups.

However, the suggested script did not run due to errors. What is wrong with the script?

The script is below:

var app = Spotfire.Dxp.Application.getApplication();

// Get the map chart object

var mapChart = app.getActiveDocument().getActiveVisualization();

// Get the map layers collection

var mapLayers = mapChart.MapLayers;

// Create a new group for the map layers

var layerGroup = mapLayers.addGroup("Group 1");

// Add some map layers to the group

layerGroup.add(mapLayers[0]);

layerGroup.add(mapLayers[1]);

layerGroup.add(mapLayers[2]);

[Heleen Snelting]

Hi Dagfinn,

Did you try to debug the script? What error messages are you not able to resolve? I am not saying we can help you debug a script written by ChatGPT but curious what type of results you got, where it fails. And also what specific question you asked Chat GPT.

And can you provide a bit more context around the use-case and the groupings? We don't often see users needing 30-40 layers in a map. And we can maybe share some ideas for you to experiment with. What have you tried already if anything?

thanks,

Heleen Snelting

[Gaia Paolini]

My suggestion for a workaround: I could not find a method in the Spotfire API to create groups or add layers to groups. But we could work with a helper table, called e.g. 'groups' in which you would have two columns: the layer name ('layer') and the group it is assigned to ('group').

You could then add a selection box to a Text Area. If you want to enable multiple groups, I would set it as a List Box (multiple select) mapped to a document property called selectedGroups. This will be created automatically of type StringList.

Create a button to use this IronPython script to enable the layers corresponding to the selected group(s): the variable 'mymap' is an input variable of type Visualization that you will point to your map chart.

In the script I explicitly deselect all layers that are in the groups table but are not selected (rather than deselecting all other layers, to avoid disabling base layers like the MapLayer).

# Copyright © 2023. TIBCO Software Inc. Licensed under TIBCO BSD-style license. from Spotfire.Dxp.Application.Visuals.Maps import *from Spotfire.Dxp.Data import *  ### Find selected groupsselected_groups = Document.Properties['selectedGroups'] ### Read grouping lookup tablegroup_column='group'layer_column='layer'group_table=Document.Data.Tables['groups']rowCount = group_table.RowCount rowsToInclude = IndexSet(rowCount,True)cursor1 = DataValueCursor.CreateFormatted(group_table.Columns[group_column])cursor2 = DataValueCursor.CreateFormatted(group_table.Columns[layer_column]) # locate layers corresponding to selected groupsselected_layers=list()deselected_layers=list()for row in group_table.GetRows(rowsToInclude,cursor1,cursor2): rowIndex = row.Index val1 = cursor1.CurrentValue val2 = cursor2.CurrentValue if val1 in selected_groups: selected_layers.append(val2) else: deselected_layers.append(val2) mymap = mymap.As[MapChart]()layers = mymap.Layersfor ll in layers: if ll.Title in selected_layers: ll.Enabled = True elif ll.Title in deselected_layers: ll.Enabled = False