topic Re: Breaking time in ArcGIS API for Python Questions

Breaking time

HåkonDreyer — Wed, 12 Sep 2018 07:01:05 GMT

Hi, it seems importing the GIS breaks a former from time import time import as demonstrated in the following example.

Switching the imports works, but it's not intuitive, and neither very PEP 8.

It seems time.sleep() is the only function from the time module that are used in the API, and it is only used twice, in Item.export() and Item._check_publish_status().

Still, there are three instances of import time scattered around in the __init__.py file. Wouldn't it be better to narrow the import to a from time import sleep in the imports at top of the file?

Re: Breaking time

DanPatterson_Retired — Wed, 12 Sep 2018 10:51:08 GMT

You might want to post this on GitHub as well

GitHub - Esri/arcgis-python-api: Documentation and samples for ArcGIS API for Python

Re: Breaking time

HåkonDreyer — Wed, 12 Sep 2018 11:24:25 GMT

Guess I could, but the take from What is the preferred way to report found bugs in the Python API? and https://community.esri.com/thread/196929-geonet-or-github-for-technical-questions-about-api was that GeoNet was the preferred channel for this kind of reports.

Re: Breaking time

DanPatterson_Retired — Wed, 12 Sep 2018 12:44:42 GMT

Yes, but it is nice to see it on GitHub as well for those that don't travel geonet

Re: Breaking time

RohitSingh2 — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 12:51:51 GMT

I am unable to reproduce it with v1.5. What version of the Python API are you using?

Re: Breaking time

HåkonDreyer — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 13:00:53 GMT

Strange, I'm on 1.5.

Re: Breaking time

HåkonDreyer — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 13:22:28 GMT

But then, when testing in an environment not cloned from Pro it works…

Re: Breaking time

DanPatterson_Retired — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 13:27:01 GMT

Strange too

even in jupyter console and spyder

I read somewhere that the time namespace gets reassigned, but I can't put my hand on it

Re: Breaking time

JoshuaBixby — Sun, 12 Dec 2021 08:41:15 GMT

I think this is more of an ArcPy issue than an ArcGIS API for Python issue, but it becomes an issue for the latter when the former is imported. If you import ArcPy first (not suggesting it as a workflow/workaround, just for testing), then importing from arcgis.gis doesn't clobber your time import.

(arcgis-py3) C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\ESRI\conda\envs\arcgis-py3>python
Python 3.6.5 |Anaconda, Inc.| (default, Mar 29 2018, 13:32:41) [MSC v.1900 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from time import time
>>> type(time)
<class 'builtin_function_or_method'>
>>> import arcpy
>>> type(time)
<class 'module'>
>>> from time import time
>>> type(time)
<class 'builtin_function_or_method'>
>>> from arcgis.gis import GIS
>>> type(time)
<class 'builtin_function_or_method'>
>>>‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

Unfortunately, importing from datetime and time can be tricky since the modules contain classes with the exact same names. For that reason, I just import the time module since time() doesn't save much over time.time(). For datetime, I usually do from datetime import datetime as dt.

It would be great if we had a time.Time class instead of a time.time class, and a datetime.Datetime class instead of a datetime.datetime, but I don't know the full history of why those two modules ended up the way they did.

Re: Breaking time

HåkonDreyer — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 14:45:33 GMT

Good point, guess it explains the difference between cloned Pro-environments and environments built in Conda.

And yes, switching the imports works, but it is neither intuitive nor good style as mentioned in the original post.

Re: Breaking time

DanPatterson_Retired — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 15:15:45 GMT

maybe arcpy used have used 'thyme' instead

Re: Breaking time

AndrewChapkowski — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 15:17:31 GMT

Yes the python API does use the `time` module. This is not an easy fix since the API uses many 3rd party libraries as well who do `import time`, so there is no guarantee that if we modify code to not use `import time` that it would still not be an issue.