Batch uploading shapefiles to ArcGIS Online

Question

Google, StackExchange and GeoNet have been less fruitful than I had imagined for a seemingly bread and butter task.  I currently manage data on an ArcGIS Online Group (Organizational account) and have multiple shapefiles to upload and serve.  I don't want to package them as a database - I want the individual shapefiles to be listed individually with their specific metadata, filename, etc.  My best solution is to upload shapefiles individually - let's say 5 - 30 at a time on a weekly basis.  I really want to script this and seems the ArcGIS package on Python has this functionality?  I use Python.

I would appreciate links to any scripts, packages or python code to help me get started.  I do have access to Arc Pro as well.  Thanks.

ZacharyUhlmann · Answer

Thanks Lukas (late response by me!!). I briefly tried your first link awhile back but since then I was able to get going on ArcGIS Pro and easily access the Python ArcGIS API. The SECOND link you posted includes similar code to mine below in a response by Dong-gyun Kim. I partially cannibalized parts from this Tutorial on the ArcGIS Python API page - Accessing and managing groups | ArcGIS for Developers. Here is what I settled on...pseudocode = 1) Prepare lists for Titles, Tags and Snippets. 2) Login to AGOL 3) Upload shapefiles (zipped): # 1) Tags, Titles and Snippets # Create a list for each of the three where len(list) = n shapefiles # 1a) TITLE zipped_dirs = ['full/path/to/file1.zip', 'full/path/to/file2.zip', 'full/path/to/file2.zip'] # Option A - use file names for Title: 'file1.zip' into 'file1' OR do this: title = [dir[:-4] for dir in os.listdir(zipped_dirs)] # Option B - list file names manually/custom # title = ['wetland birds', 'wetland sasquatch', 'wetland skunk cabbage'] # 1b) TAGS # tags get a little wierd because I make a list of lists. I wanted multiple tags # for each shapefile. There are programmatic ways to make lists of lists if # you have a bunch of shapefiles and manual creation is time consuming... tags = [['wetland', 'birds'], ['wetland', 'sasquatch'], ['wetland', 'skunk cabbage']] # 1c) SNIPPETS # snippets could have separate items within the list for each shapefile as well. # For my purposes I was find with the same for each. snippet = ['wetland observation data current as of 7/13/2020'] * len(title) # 2) GIS stuff: login with credentials zach_gis = GIS(username = 'myusername.com', password = 'mypassword') print('Connected to {} as {}'.format(zach_gis.properties.portalHostname, zach_gis.users.me.username)) # Group object for a group. The string of letters, numbers is from url some_group = Group(zach_gis, 'a6384c1111111a43bfd91f5d9723912b') # 3) AGOL Add data to Content and Groups for idx, shp in enumerate(zipped_dirs): properties_dict = {'title':title[idx], 'tags':tags[idx], 'snippet':snippet[idx]} fc_item = zach_gis.content.add(properties_dict, data = shp) fc_item.share(groups = 'a6384c1111111a43bfd91f5d9723912b') ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

LukasFalk · Answer

Hey Zachary!

After doing some research into your inquiry I found a code sample at the URL below to achieve your desired task.

Bulk upload and publish shapefiles to ArcGIS Online · GitHub

Let me know how that goes for you.  Additionally, I found some posts on the ArcGIS Ideas page supporting the added ability to upload multiple items at once to ArcGIS Online.  I would recommend up voting this suggestion, and as it gains more traction development may consider implementing it!

https://community.esri.com/ideas/8175

I hope this helps!