Breaking Changes in Esri’s JavaScript 4.x API coming in VertiGIS Studio Web 5.21

If you are using out-of-the-box VertiGIS Studio Web, no action is required. As part of our ongoing work to insulate you from Esri technology change over time, we’ve updated VertiGIS Studio Web and you won’t notice the change.

If you are developing custom libraries/components in Web or custom activities or activity packs in VertiGIS Studio Workflow that use Esri ArcGIS JavaScript 4.x API, take note!

In the Esri ArcGIS JavaScript 4.24 API the deprecated tasks interfaces have been removed.
https://developers.arcgis.com/javascript/latest/4.24/#breaking-changes

Each release of Esri’s ArcGIS JavaScript API has some breaking changes, so why are we emphasizing it this time?

As much as 15-20% of the surface area of the API has changed as a result, and many common API actions for query, search, identify, geocoding, geoprocessing and more will no longer function as they used to and have a new API pattern for use. In short, we expect this is going to affect a lot of folks who have been doing custom development against the Esri ArcGIS JavaScript 4.x API.

If you have limited your use of the Esri ArcGIS JavaScript 4.x API to the VertiGIS ArcGIS Extensions API that exposes the Esri ArcGIS JavaScript 4.x API; you are fine. We’ve updated the VertiGIS ArcGIS Extensions API and your code will continue to work.

However, if you are directly referencing @arcgis/core/tasks or esri/tasks (depending on whether your code is setup for AMD or ESM) actions are required as your existing code will break once you move to VertiGIS Studio 5.21 (which is using the Esri JavaScript 4.24 API).

Anything previously referenced via tasks is now referenced via rest. In Esri’s words:

“Tasks have been deprecated since 4.20. They were removed at 4.24. The replacements are the classes and modules in the esri/rest folder. This will make it easier to incorporate your code into a more modular app design, and also reduce unnecessary dependencies (you only import what you want). The new rest modules are functions, which do not require constructors, so you can use their methods immediately.”

You can change and test your code today to use Esri’s new esri/rest pattern, there is no need to wait for VertiGIS Studio Web 5.21 (in fact, you are in better shape if you don’t wait!)