Parsing csv data and updating a dictionary

Question

Hello All: I am a little stuck on my code. I am new to python and am learning as I go, but have usually been able to figure it out till now. The code was working up till I put the dictionary part in and now this is where its failing. When I run the program, it only goes through once and doesn't appear to be storing the data. I have found people in the discussions have had the same problem, but they never said what helped them resolve the issue. Below is a breakdown of the objective of the program: The rhinos in the spreadsheet appear in no guaranteed order, and not all the rhinos appear at the beginning of the spreadsheet. As I parse each line, I must determine which rhino the reading belongs to and update that rhino's polyline track accordingly. I am not allowed to sort the Rhino column in Excel before I export to the CSV file. My script must be "smart" enough to work with an unsorted spreadsheet in the order that the records appear. I do not immediately know how many rhinos are in the file or even what their names are. Although I could visually comb the spreadsheet for this information and hard-code each rhino's name, your script is required to handle all the rhino names programmatically. The idea is that I should be able to run this script on a different file, possibly containing more rhinos, without having to make many manual adjustments. Sample Data: Observer,X,Y,Rhino,Comments Ben,26.99391,-19.10447,Bo, Ben,27.00071,-19.1089,Tulip,Bathing Ben,26.9919,-19.10511,Bo, Ben,27.00071,-19.1059,Tulip, Ben,26.96809,-19.09578,Patches, Ben,26.97808,-19.11016,Dinky, Ben,26.99213,-19.10395,Bo, Ben,27.00083,-19.10326,Tulip, Appreciate any help and guidance anyone has to offer. #Import a csv file into ArcMap and plot the points for each Rhino import arcpy import csv arcpy.env.workspace = "C:\GEOG485\Lesson4\Project4" arcpy.env.overwriteOutput = True targetFolder = "C:\GEOG485\Lesson4\Project4" rhinoShape = "C:\GEOG485\Lesson4\Project4\Rhino.shp" rhinoFile = "C:\GEOG485\Lesson4\Project4\RhinoObservations.csv" spatialRef = arcpy.Describe(rhinoShape).spatialReference try: #Open CSV file and read the headers trackPoints = open(rhinoFile, "r") textLine = trackPoints.readline() headerLine = textLine.strip(" ") pairList = headerLine.split(",") print pairList polylineArray = arcpy.Array() #Get index for header fields xIndex = pairList.index("X") yIndex = pairList.index("Y") rhinoIndex = pairList.index("Rhino") print rhinoIndex #Created an empty dictionary dictionaryRhinoTracks = {} for line in trackPoints.readlines(): line = line.rstrip(" ") splitLine = line.split(",") print splitLine #Created variable for needed field items based on index location pointX = splitLine[xIndex] pointY = splitLine[yIndex] rhinoName = splitLine[rhinoIndex] #Create a point object currentPoint.x = pointX currentPoint.y = pointY currentPoint = arcpy.Point(currentPoint.x, currentPoint.y) print currentPoint #Check if the dictionary does not contain name if rhinoName not in dictionaryRhinoTracks: rhinoTrackArray = polylineArray.Add(currentPoint) #Add the point object to the Array dictionaryRhinoTracks[rhinoName].Add(currentPoint) cursor = arcpy.da.InsertCursor(rhinoShape, ['SHAPE@']) cursor.insertRow([polyline]) for rhinoName in dictionaryRhinoTracks: row.Shape = dictionaryRhinoTracks[rhinoName] row.Rhino_Name = rhinoName cursor.InsertRow(row) except: print ("error again")‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

JoeBorgione · Answer

A couple house keeping items: I suggest you get into the habit of using the syntax highlighter. You can find it by clicking the three dots to expand the menu, click more, syntax highlighter and finally select python. It just makes reading your code much easier. You have a huge try/except block, with little to go on if you get a failure. You might want to break up you various steps into separate try/except blocks, something like this: import arcy, etc try: first step of the process blah blah bla except Exception as err: print err try: second step of the process blah blah blah except Exception as err: print err try: etc... except Exception as err: print err etc etc etc‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍