Summary

ArcGIS Online is becoming increasingly important as a platform for creating and sharing maps and other resources. As a developer, you can integrate these maps into your custom applications. Each map has a unique identifier that you can use to reference the map, and the esri/utils module gives you access to methods you can call to retrieve details of the map and create an instance of it. Because it can take some time to return these maps from ArcGIS Online, the getItem() and createMap() methods return dojo/Deferred objects that provide callback functions for both success and failure. Once the maps have been successfully obtained from ArcGIS Online, they can then be used in your application just like any other map service. In the next chapter, you will learn how to use the ArcGIS API for JavaScript to create mobile applications.