ArcGIS Enterprise Custom Data Feeds (CDF)

A Custom Data Feed is a Node.js provider — running on Koop.js inside the ArcGIS Enterprise SDK runtime — that pulls from any external source (REST API, database, file) and exposes it as a standard ArcGIS Feature Service. Your provider returns GeoJSON; the framework translates it into the GeoServices REST spec that ArcGIS clients consume.

Deployment and registration on ArcGIS Server (uploading .cdpk, cdf register) is out of scope here — this skill covers authoring and local testing of the provider.

Confirm the target Enterprise version first — before any code

CDF arrived in ArcGIS Enterprise 11.1 (it does not exist in 10.x), and its capabilities are gated by release. The provider you write depends entirely on the version it must run against, so pin it before writing anything:

• Ask which ArcGIS Enterprise version(s) must run this provider. A provider compiled against a newer runtime does not run on an older server — build against the lowest target release.
• 12.x requires a recompile. Providers must be recompiled in 12.x to run there; a provider built on 11.x is not binary-compatible with a 12.x runtime.
• Match the OS family and Node.js major version of the development machine to the target server, or the compiled provider fails to load.

For the current release, the per-version capability list, and any breaking changes, read the live ArcGIS Enterprise SDK CDF guide and its "What's New" pages — do not rely on a restated matrix, which goes stale. To confirm a class, method, or option exists at a version, defer to the arcgis-docs-lookup skill.

The 12.0 generation boundary

CDF fundamentally changed at 12.0 — treat pre-12.0 and 12.0+ as two generations and never mix their assumptions: