How to format decimal places in labels

SerenaFraccascia

I have a point feature class for which I want to show labels based on a numeric "Field". My labels have to be rounded to the second decimal place and I need to have them padded with zeros. I know that I can manually modify it through the Layer Properties, but I need to write a script for that.

I have tried to run the following code, also based on other posts, but I end up with no labels at all:

import arcpy

mxd = arcpy.mapping.MapDocument("CURRENT")

layer = arcpy.mapping.ListLayers(mxd, "Layername")[0]

if layer.supports("LABELCLASSES"):
    for lblClass in layer.labelClasses:
        lblClass.className = "Field"
        lblClass.expression = "Field".format("%.2f")
        layer.showLabels = True

I wonder whether I have missed some steps. Thanks in advance for your help!

StephenM

I think the reason why no labels are displaying is because that expression isn't valid in VBScript, which is the default label expression parser in ArcMap. It looks like a Python expression, but that format statement isn't quite right. Using the Python parser that expression is valid, but it would set all the labels to say "Field". What you'll probably want to do is use the VBScript FormatNumber function.

Other considerations:

• That first statement in the for loop (lblClass.className = "Field") sets all the label class names to be "Field"—not sure if that's what you want.
• You might also want the layer.showLabels statement to be outside the for loop so that it isn't set on each iteration of the loop.

If you're looking to label specific label classes in the layer, you could do something like this:

if layer.supports("LABELCLASSES"):
   for lblClass in layer.labelClasses:
      if(lblClass.className == "LabelThisClass"):
         lblClass.expression = "FormatNumber([field],2)"
         lblClass.showClassLabels = True
   layer.showLabels = True

Otherwise, if all the features in the layer are labeled the same way you could do something like this:

if layer.supports("LABELCLASSES"):
   for lblClass in layer.labelClasses:
      lblClass.expression = "FormatNumber([field],2)"

   layer.showLabels = True

This code uses VBScript for the label expression since that is the default parser. An equivalent Python expression could be written using the format() method: "format(float([field]),'.2f')". I don't think there's a way to change the label expression parser using ArcPy though, so you'll probably want to go with VBScript.

A potentially useful reference:

Building label expressions—Help | ArcGIS Desktop