Publish a geocode service

Geocode services provide geocoding capabilities on the web. By publishing a locator to a stand-alone ArcGIS Server, geocoding capabilities are available to anyone with access to that ArcGIS Server. Geocode services support various operations, such as finding addresses or places, geocoding tables of addresses or places, finding information about a location with reverse geocoding, and providing interactive autocomplete suggestions.

Note:

This workflow is only available when publishing to stand-alone ArcGIS Server. To share locators to a server federated with ArcGIS Enterprise, see Share a locator.

You can also use ArcPy to publish a geocode service to a stand-alone server. To learn more, see CreateGeocodeSDDraft.

Prior to publishing your locator, there are a few options you can use to manage locator data in the server. See the following topics to learn more about managing locator data:

Note:

  • Publishing a locator created with the Create Address Locator tool requires stand-alone ArcGIS Server 10.6 or later.
  • Publishing a locator created with the Create Locator tool requires stand-alone ArcGIS Server 10.6.1 or later.
  • Publishing a locator based on the Parcel role created with the Create Locator tool or a locator created with the Create Feature Locator tool, requires stand-alone ArcGIS Server 10.8 or later.
  • Publishing a locator created with the Create Locator tool with the Precision Type parameter set to Global Extra High or Local Extra High requires stand-alone ArcGIS Server 10.8.1 or later.

To publish a geocode service, follow these steps:

  1. In the Catalog pane or a catalog view, browse to the collection of servers in your project. Right-click the ArcGIS Server that you'll publish to, click Publish, and click Geocode Service Geocoding Service.

    The Publish menu is only available on ArcGIS Server connections to stand-alone servers with privileges to publish services.

  2. On the Select Locator dialog box, browse to the locator that you want to publish, select it, and click OK.
  3. In the Publish Geocode Service pane, enter the Name of the service, and add a Summary and Tags.

    Note:
    The name of the service cannot be more than 120 characters in length and can contain only alphanumeric characters and underscores.

  4. In the Folder menu, specify the folder on the server where you want to store the service. Type the name of the folder if the folder does not already exist.

    The service is stored in the root folder if a folder is not specified.

  5. On the Configuration tab, set the properties for your geocode service. You can choose what users can do with your service by enabling Capabilities as needed and take fine-grain control of how the server exposes your service.

    For details on setting the service properties, see Configure a geocode service. For information about how to best configure your services for deployment, see Tuning and configuring services.

  6. Optionally, click the Content tab to view the new service structure.
  7. Click Analyze to identify potential issues or limitations. The Messages tab displays errors and warnings raised by the analysis. Right-click a message to get more information, access the associated help topic, or access suggested fixes.

    For more information about resolving these issues, see Analyze your GIS resource.

    Note:
    Analyzer help topics refer to the locator that corresponds to the service being published. For example, you may see references to composite locators for an analyzer issued for your geocode service.

  8. Once you've resolved any errors, and optionally resolved any warnings, click Publish.
  9. When the service has successfully published, optionally click the Manage the service link to access the service REST endpoint.

Related topics