Portal for ArcGIS and Portal API

Portal for ArcGIS

Portal for ArcGIS is a website and repository for GIS content such as web maps and applications. It provides the same collaboration and sharing tools as ArcGIS Online, but differs in where it is hosted and what content is available to users. Portal for ArcGIS can be deployed behind an organization's firewall, on premise, in the cloud, or a private instance can be hosted and managed by Esri for your organization.

Portal for ArcGIS API

The Portal API is based on the REST specification of a portal and supports ArcGIS Portal API versions 1.6.1 and upwards. Portal for ArcGIS API allows application developers to work with users, groups and content hosted within ArcGIS Online or an ArcGIS Portal. Most commonly, applications may work with web maps that are accessed through the portal. An introduction to web maps can be found here.

You can learn about the concepts involved in the ArcGIS Portal API here http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/arcgisonline/index.html#//010q000000mv000000.

The Portal API includes the following classes which provide read access to the portal:

• The Portal class provides a view of the portal as seen by the current user, whether anonymous or logged in. It includes information such as the name, logo, featured items and supported protocols (http vs https) for this portal. This class is used for connecting to a portal and searching for items, users and groups. An example of a portal is arcgis.com: by creating a portal object with this URL a user (anonymous or with credentials) can see the contents of the portal.
• The PortalInfo class is used to hold some information about the portal such as default basemap, featured groups, and more. If the user is not logged in, this call will return some defaults. If the user is logged in, the account information returned will be specific to the user's account.
• The PortalGroup class represents a group in a portal. The owner of the group can invite/remove other users to have access to the group. Users can request to join a group. The Portal API allows reading a group.
• The PortalItem class represents an item stored in a portal. The item is the URI returned by all search operations. The Item class only contains information about an item stored in the portal. The actual data (WebMap, FeatureCollection, etc) will be retrieved when creating a WebMap.
• The PortalQueryParams class creates query parameters suitable for finding content contained in a portal, such as groups and items in group.
• The PortalQueryResultSet class contains the results of queries performed on a Portal. A "pageable" search performed on a Portal may yield a large number of results. By default, only the first ten result values are returned. The PortalQueryResultSet allows clients to retrieve results in batches and fetches more results from the server when necessary.

Working with the Portal for ArcGIS API

The ArcGIS Runtime for Java Sample Application has Portal samples showing how to list a portal's Featured Groups and display a WebMap .