ArcGis reading field as integer when it should be string.

FrankChin

Hello,
I am trying to read in a .txt (tab delimited) file using a python script and ArcGIS 10.1:

SCRB_ZIP_5_CD SCRB_ZIP_4_CD SCRB_ZIP_3_CD SCRB_ST_CD COUNTY_FIPS_CD LAT_DEG LNG_DEG NEW_RECORD_IND ID
"02916" "1245" "703" "RI" "44007" 41.843590 -71.349532 "N" 50

The first field, SCRB_ZIP_5_CD, should be a string, however it is being read as an integer and dropping the leading zero, is there a workaround to read this field as a string?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Frank

KimOllivier

You have not specified how you are reading in the text file.

Have you had a look at the schema.ini specification? This is a Microsoft standard for defining the schema for reading in text files.
It works really well for loading text files into a geodatabase table because you can rename, set input widths, types to make the simple table to table tool work very well. This avoids a lot of complex coding opening a file and unpicking the components.

If you have a table in a database try exporting it as a txt file and at 10.x a schema.ini file will be generated for you. Then keep the file with the source, edit the name and hey presto a schema that works.

Here is an example where I actually write the schema after dumping out the table as a text file. This is much faster than an InsertCursor at 10.0. Maybe the new da module makes it faster, but it is still a very easy way of defining a schema.

..... f2 = open("e:/crs/currentgdb/schema.ini","w") f2.write("""[owners.csv] Format=CSVDelimited ColNameHeader=True col1=TTL_TITLE_NO Text Width 20 col2=OWNERS Text Width 120""") f2.close() print "uses schema.ini" arcpy.conversion.TableToTable(csvOwners,ws,"owners")