Book Image

Programming ArcGIS with Python Cookbook, Second Edition

By : Eric Pimpler
Book Image

Programming ArcGIS with Python Cookbook, Second Edition

By: Eric Pimpler

Overview of this book

The book kicks off with the fundamentals of starting to use Python with ArcGIS, followed by recipes on managing map documents and layers, including how to find and fix broken data links in these files. In the second part of the book, you will learn to create custom geoprocessing tools and how to use the Attribute and Location tools to select specific features. The third part of the book covers topics for advanced users including the REST API, and also teaches you how to use Python with ArcGIS Pro. The book finishes with appendices covering how to automate Python scripts, and the five things that should be at the back of every GIS programmer's mind.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
16
Index

Referencing the current map document


When running a geoprocessing script from the ArcGIS Python window or a custom script tool, you will often need to make a reference to the map document which is currently loaded in ArcMap. This is typically the first step in your script before you perform geoprocessing operations against layers and tables in a map document. In this recipe, you will learn how to reference the current map document from your Python geoprocessing script.

Getting ready

Before you can actually perform any operations on a map document file, you need to make a reference to it in your Python script. This is done by calling the MapDocument() method on the arcpy.mapping module. You can reference either the currently running document or a document at a specific location on disk. To reference the currently active document, you simply supply the keyword CURRENT as a parameter to the MapDocument() function. This loads the currently active document in ArcMap. The following code example...