Potential for porting this functionality into @esri/arcgis-maplibre

[patrickarlt]

Hi @rowanwins it has been awhile. In case you missed it we launched a new ArcGIS <-> Maplibre integration at https://github.com/Esri/maplibre-arcgis. Currently we include some limited support for feature layers bu mimicking the JS API behavior for snapshot loading.

Over the next few months we would like to add support for both tiled feature layers and PBF based queries with of which this library (and arcgis-pbf-parser) does very well. Would you be interested in working with us on this or at least ok with us forking your code under the Apache License into https://github.com/Esri/maplibre-arcgis and adding you as a contributor? This would probably also involve porting the work you did in arcgis-pbf-parser over too ArcGIS REST JS (re Esri/arcgis-rest-js#702).

What do you think?

[rowanwins]

Hey @patrickarlt - long time no chat, finally you're opening an issue in my repo rather than vice-versa! Those Esri-leaflet days taught me alot early in dev career so thank you (I included an acknowledgment over here in a related repo to this one).

I had not seen https://github.com/Esri/maplibre-arcgis but I'm glad to seeing Esri putting the effort into setting up a more fleshed-out library.

My efforts in this space have been fairly basic - the original work was done on an R&D day at an old employer so it was all cobbled together pretty quickly mainly as a POC. These days I'm not employed in a geo-role so I don't have much impetus to maintain this or related libraries.

As an FYI @muimsd recently ported this code across to, along with another of my libraries mapbox-gl-esri-sources (for map and image services), into esri-gl. He did some modernisation work like porting it into TS, adding some tests etc, so that might also be worth a look.

In terms of me making any further contributions to an esri-owned/managed library that's unlikely at the moment, primarily due to my current role being outside of geo - the FOSS4G bits I've done over the years was always a fun itch to scratch when I worked in the space, but I'm not dying to do it in my free time, but I appreciate the offer :)

And in terms of Esri forking or porting the code in some manner, that would be fine, I wouldn't be offended or bare any ill-will. TBH I'm not sure if there is really that much of value in there - it's a pretty small library, and so in some ways for the team might be better off starting from scratch and just using this as loose inspiration.
That said if Esri wanted to put an acknowledgement of this work somewhere in the repo then that would be appreciated :)

Regards,
Rowan

PS And while I have you attention please make ArcGIS Portal better too 🙃 😂

[patrickarlt]

Thanks Rowan! I'm mostly interested in some of the logic around creating and managing the tiles and the research that you did in arcgis-pbf-parser to get the parsing working.

I'll definitely make sure we credit you in the repos if/when we use this. We are also chatting with @muimsd but we are wrapping up some internal conversations first.

I'm open to any feedback around ArcGIS Portal, but I mostly only have influence over the doc but I can defiantly pass things along internally. My email is parlt@esri.com if you want to send me feedback privately.