Seven Location Platform services. One key. One workbench.

The platform

What the Location Platform is

The ArcGIS Location Platform is Esri’s developer offering: the same services that power ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Pro, exposed to your own applications and billed per request, with an included monthly allowance per service. One API key authenticates every call. This workbench shows each service working, so you can see the request, the result and the cost model before you write a line of code.

• ArcGIS Location Platform — Esri’s own page for the platform, its service catalog and its rates.
• API key credentials — how a key is created, scoped to privileges and referrer URLs, and sent with a request.

Watch it work

Watch the walkthrough

Create an API key in the Location Platform dashboard, paste it in, and run every function on all seven tabs, on Denver, Colorado.

How it works

Bring your own key

The app ships without a key of its own. Until you paste one, the map stays on OpenStreetMap and every service tab is inactive.

Create a key in the Location Platform dashboard: Content, New item, Developer credentials, API key credentials. Tick the privileges the workbench needs — basemaps, geocoding, routing, places, elevation, GeoEnrichment — add the workbench address as a referrer URL so the key only works from this page, and set an expiration. Copy the key once; the dashboard does not show it again.

In the workbench, Activate your key opens a masked field. Validate & Save checks the key against the World Geocoding service, the basemap switches to the ArcGIS basemap, and the pill shows the last four characters. The key lives in your browser tab only (sessionStorage) and is gone when the tab closes; it is never sent to All Things Spatial.

Seven tabs

• Geocoding — forward (address to coordinates, with a match score), reverse (typed coordinates or a click on the map), and Batch CSV with a Download of the results.
• Routing — two or more stops typed or pinned on the map, Driving / Walking / Trucking, Optimize order, then the route line, total distance and time, and turn-by-turn directions.
• Places — a category filter, an anchor point and a radius; results list name, category and distance, and each marker has a popup. The Places service returns up to 20 places per page and caps the search radius at 10 km (6.2 mi).
• Data — any hosted feature layer by URL with a WHERE clause (the example is Esri’s USA Major Cities layer, POPULATION > 100000, capped at 500 features), or upload your own GeoJSON or CSV.
• Elevation — point elevation in meters and feet, and a multi-point profile drawn as an SVG chart; the elevation service takes up to 100 points within a 50 km box.
• Enrichment — population, households, income and housing for a ring around any point, through the GeoEnrichment service; the workbench caps it at 10 calls a day because it is the most expensive call in the suite.
• Spatial — buffer, overlay (union, intersect, A minus B), convex hull and measure, all computed in the browser on the Maps SDK geometryEngine with no service call.

Today’s Usage counts each service against its daily cap and resets at midnight; Manage your key clears the key from the app.

Limits

Service limits, from Esri’s documentation

FAQ

Common questions

Does All Things Spatial see my key?

No. The key is validated against Esri’s geocoding service from your browser, stored in sessionStorage, and cleared when the tab closes. It is never sent to an ATS server.

What does a call cost?

Esri bills per request per service above the included monthly allowance; the current rates are on Esri’s pricing page. The workbench’s Today’s Usage panel counts your calls per service.

Why does the map look different before I paste a key?

Without a key the app uses OpenStreetMap tiles; with a key it switches to the ArcGIS basemap, which is itself a Location Platform service.

Can I use a key without a referrer?

You can, but a key restricted to the two workbench addresses cannot be used from anywhere else if it leaks.

Which tabs do not need a key?

Only Spatial: buffer, overlay, hull and measure run in the browser on geometryEngine.

Is the code available?

The two builds are demonstrations of the same workflow on two UI stacks (React on the ATS brand template, and Esri’s Calcite Design System); the patterns are the ones All Things Spatial uses in client applications.