The iapackager.exe is a command line tool that is included in the installation of InstantAtlas Desktop 6.12.0. It can be used to create the necessary files to open a locally saved report directly in an Internet browser. Please refer to the Starting Your Dynamic Report page for general information on how to open your dynamic report.
There are two main reasons why you may wish to use this tool:
- You have a report that was published with a version of the InstantAtlas Publisher prior to 6.12.0 and you wish to create the necessary files to be able to open it from a local or shared drive
- You have made changes to one or more of the following files using third-party software, such as a text editor, and want to transfer those changes to their respective local variant of the file(s).
To use the iapackager tool you should do the following:
- Use Windows Explorer to browse to the InstantAtlas installation folder. By default, this is C:\Program Files\EsriUK\InstantAtlas. You should see a file called iapackager.exe in this folder. Do NOT double-click this file.
- Ensure that no file or subfolder is selected. Press and hold the Shift key on your keyboard and right-click anywhere in the folder background, either below the files or to the right of a list view. Select Open PowerShell window here or Open command window here (whichever option is available for you).
- A new window with either a blue or black background will open showing the path to your installation folder. Type .\iapackager followed by a space character and the path to the report folder. If any of the folder names in the path contain spaces, you need to wrap the path into double quotes e.g.: .\iapackager “C:\InstantAtlas Reports\Single Map\”
- Press enter to run the tool to create the files needed for local viewing of the dynamic report.
- In the report folder, you can sort the files by Date modified to see the recently created files at the top. Double-click the atlas-launch.html file to open the locally saved report.
Troubleshooting
If the tool encounters an error, you will see an error message on the screen. This is usually the case if there is a typo in the command name or path to the report folder or if the double quotes are missing around a path containing spaces.
The tool will also show an error if it cannot find one or more of the required report files. These are the following:
- config.xml
- data.js (including any related theme files)
- map.js
- a file containing the feature geometry information for each base geography e.g. _post_code_sectors.shp1.js
- a file containing the feature geometry information for each contextual geography e.g. contextualLayer1.jsIt is therefore advised to only run the tool on folders containing all files that make up a dynamic report rather than on a subset of the files.
Please note that you cannot convert the local variant of the files into their respective counterparts for use on a webserver. This means that if you make manual changes e.g. to the map-vars.js.js file and then run the iapackager tool, those changes will be overwritten with the content of the map.js file.