topic Re: DA Search Cursor Ignoring sql_clause in ArcGIS Pro Questions

DA Search Cursor Ignoring sql_clause

RandyMcGregor_BMcD — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 16:49:17 GMT

A search curser was ignoring the ORDER BY command I had plugged in and I thought I'd enter a nonsense sql_clause just to see what error it threw. The uncommented one below is the cursor command with the nonsense sql_clause

It ... runs fine. It doesn't do the ordering I want it to do, of course, but it runs. No error. When I run the line with the ORDER BY clause it completely ignores the order also. The 'order_field' is a field that exists. I've tried hard- coding the field name in the clause. It just won't work.

Throwing this out in the off chance that the problem here is obvious to someone. I suspect I may have to do lots and lots of troubleshooting/error trapping. Something is off here.

Thank you,

Randy McGregor

Re: DA Search Cursor Ignoring sql_clause

D_Atkins — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 16:50:36 GMT

Your commented out code is missing a comma (after the fields list) , and it also uses parentheses instead of the list-bracket notation for the SQL clause. Here is a minimum working example, tested both with and without the where_clause:

import arcpy # URL must point to the specific sublayer index (e.g., /0, /1) url = "https://sampleserver6.arcgisonline.com/arcgis/rest/services/Wildfire/FeatureServer/2" layer_name = "Wildfire Polygons" # Create the feature layer featureLayer = arcpy.management.MakeFeatureLayer(url, layer_name) count = 0 print("UNORDERED") with arcpy.da.SearchCursor(featureLayer, ['objectid', 'symbolID', 'Shape__Area'], where_clause = "symbolID IN (0, 1)") as sCursor: for row in sCursor: if count < 10: # rounded fire boundary area: print( str(round(row[2]) ).rjust(20) ) count += 1 print("ORDERED:") count = 0 with arcpy.da.SearchCursor(featureLayer, ['objectid', 'symbolID', 'Shape__Area'], where_clause = "symbolID IN (0, 1)", sql_clause=[None, 'ORDER BY Shape__Area DESC']) as sCursor: for row in sCursor: if count < 10: # rounded fire boundary area: print( str(round(row[2]) ).rjust(20) ) count += 1

** EDIT: Just for fun, I traded out the brackets for parentheses, and it still ran!

Re: DA Search Cursor Ignoring sql_clause

RandyMcGregor_BMcD — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 17:32:54 GMT

Thank you for that catch. Yes, I noticed that and corrected, but the problem remained. It turns out, The input layer was a route event layer, not a gdb feature class. The sql_query doesn't work on those, apparently. I exported it as a feature class. It's all good now. Working as it's supposed to.