topic Re: Populating attribute table with IF statement in ArcGIS Pro Questions

Populating attribute table with IF statement

EmmaE1 — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 09:50:10 GMT

Hi all,

Apologies for what is probably a very simple question with an easy solution.

I am trying to populate a field of my attribute table using an if statement. Specifically, I have a field with vegetation types (1 - 10) but I want a new field where each of those values is assigned a name (i.e. forest cover). So If my cell value is 1, I want the new field to be assigned a value 'forest cover'. I've tried the following piece of code similar to previous answers but it is not working. Can anyone help me with a solution?

Thank you!

def customReplace(x):
if x=='1':
return 'ForestCover'
elif x=='2':
return 'ShrubCover'
elif x=='3':
return 'Grassland'
elif x=='4':
return 'Cropland'
elif x=='5':
return 'Floodland'
elif x=='6':
return 'SparseVeg'
elif VegType =='7':
return 'Bare'
elif x=='8':
return 'Built'
elif x=='10':
return 'Water'
else:
return "Not Found"

Re: Populating attribute table with IF statement

DavidPike — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 10:34:54 GMT

formatting your code will help spot syntax issues Code formatting ... the Community Version - Esri Community

Are the values 1-10 possibly integers and need the single quotes removed:

if x == 1: return 'ForestCover'

Re: Populating attribute table with IF statement

RobertBorchert — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 11:42:00 GMT

Alternately you can create a domain out of the vegetation types and assign that domain to the attribute with the vegetation types.

However, as you only have a very few choices why not just do a query and update the new attribute manually. It would take less time than it does to write to code

Or if you switch to Arcade the code would look like this

iif($feature.[attribute] = 1, 'Forest Cover', iif($feature.[attribute] = 2 , 'Shrub Cover', etc etc...))

Just continue the second value until you get to 10 then make the final value Not Found instead of a new iff statement.

Re: Populating attribute table with IF statement

RobertBorchert — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 11:43:27 GMT

Or create a look up table as a .csv or .txt file. Bring it into your project, to a join and populate the text field.

Re: Populating attribute table with IF statement

JohannesLindner — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 12:26:35 GMT

Just as a side note, nesting 10 IIFs is bound to get complicated with the closing parantheses. It's much easier to do

var att = $feature.Attribute return When(att==1, "ForestCover", att==2, "ShrubCover", att=3, "Grassland", "Not Found")

Re: Populating attribute table with IF statement

RobertBorchert — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 12:54:03 GMT

Agreed, but on a different side note. Why bother to create a line of code to to the calculation for only 10 values?

Set up the Query in Pro starting at 1 and manually field calculate the values. For that few values it would take longer to write the code. However, 10 iffs = 10 opening parenthesis which would equal 10 closing.

Re: Populating attribute table with IF statement

JohannesLindner — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 13:24:13 GMT

Sure, doing it manually is very feasible, here. Either with a query or with Select By Attribute.

Re: Populating attribute table with IF statement

jcarlson — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 14:19:45 GMT

I like a good lookup table myself. If you don't have a text file handy for this, you can also just establish a dict of values for your lookup, thus bypassing external files, joins, and nested conditionals altogether.

PS, the post has an arcade tag on it, but the presence of "elif" suggests this is Python. @EmmaE1 could you clarify your coding language?

In Python:

def customReplace(x): values = { '1': 'ForestCover', '2': 'ShrubCover', '3': 'Grassland', '4': 'Cropland', '5': 'Floodland', '6': 'SparceVeg', '7': 'Bare', '8': 'Built', '10': 'Water' } return values[x]

In Arcade:

var a = $feature.FLOORCOUNT var values = { '1': 'ForestCover', '2': 'ShrubCover', '3': 'Grassland', '4': 'Cropland', '5': 'Floodland', '6': 'SparceVeg', '7': 'Bare', '8': 'Built', '10': 'Water' } return values[a]