Shapefiles Output to scratch.gdb

Question

I have a custom geoprocessing tool built by ModelBuilder. The tool copies some feature classes to scratch.gdb and then join with other tables, finally export to some other feature classes. The tool has been run fine last few year. But exception occurred last week, INFO - 2026-09-25 04:06:08,930 - Traceback (most recent call last): File "D:\daily_sync\python asks ask.py", line 39, in run retCode = self.method() File "D:\daily_sync\python asks\full.py", line 448, in connectionFile+"/"+schema+"."+"BLDG_STRUCT_10_CLUSTER")).addPreTask(task.Task("Import toolbox", lambda: arcpy.ImportToolbox(toolboxPath))), File "C:\Program Files\ArcGIS\Server\ArcPy\arcpy\geoprocessing_base.py", line 510, in return lambda *args: val(*gp_fixargs(args, True)) ExecuteError: ERROR 000229: Cannot open C:\Users\aaaaa\AppData\Local\Temp\scratch.gdb\ASSIGNMENT_AREA Failed to execute (Spatial Join). Failed to execute (Model8). I found that there are shapefiles in scratch.gdb. The problem repeated even I re-created scratch.gdb. How can I resolve the problem?

VinceAngelo · Answer

ArcGIS can't see any shapefile data inside a folder ending in ".gdb", and any folder ending in ".gdb" which doesn't have "gdb" and "timestamps" files with ~55 other files (starting with "a000000") isn't a valid file geodatabase.

Creating those files in a .gdb folder shouldn't be possible with Esri tools. Since period is not a valid character in a table name, "C:\foo\bar\junk.gdb\ASSIGNMENT_AREA.shp" isn't a valid table name.  If some other process is making shapefiles and stuffing them into a "scratch.gdb" folder, the solution would be either:

* Use file geodatabase, not shapefile, to start (no ".shp" at the end during creation)
* Place the shapefile components in a folder NOT having a ".gdb" suffix

We might need more details on the content of that model to help figure out why invalid data is being generated.

-V

AlfredBaldenweck · Answer

Yeah, I'm a little confused.

You definitely have a shapefile in an (otherwise) empty folder that says "gdb" on it. Not sure exactly what's happening to get you to this point, but my expectation is that Pro is expecting a file geodatabase featureclass, and you're feeding it a shapefile that happens to live in a folder that is labeled as a file geodatabase but is not actually.

Easiest fix is to try just changing the path to C:\Users\aaaaa\AppData\Local\Temp\scratch.gdb\ASSIGNMENT_AREA.shp, but that ".gdb" in the path may still cause problems (ever had someone unzip a file geodatabase on you? you get \…\file.gdb\file.gdb\assignment and it causes all sorts of problems when scripting.

Pro looks for file geodatabases by 1) the extension on the folder and 2) checking for some system files found in all file geodatabases. So my next question is: How are you recreating the scratch gdb? Are you doing it through Pro's Catalog, or via arcpy, or somehow else?

JoshuaBixby · Answer

If this code has been running correctly for years, it raises the question of whether a new Pro version or patch was recently applied.  Also, I have seen something similar when a file geodatabase gets corrupted, and ArcGIS Pro thinks the FGDB folder is just a folder and not a FGDB.  In this case, having a backup of the FGDB is the only option.